


Parting the Clouds 4 -- The Signal

by Derin



Series: Parting the Clouds [4]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 02:54:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 23,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2371862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derin/pseuds/Derin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nightmares have become pretty commonplace for all the Animorphs, but something's not right about the dreams Cassie and Tobias are having. They're weird. And they're getting more desperate. </p><p>The Animorph deduce that Cassie and Tobias are picking up some kind of telepathic distress signal, and based on their limited knowledge of thought-speak, decide that the sender could be an andalite. Whoever he is, he's trapped under the ocean. Deep under the ocean. Called to action by both the debt they feel to Prince Elfangor and the prospect of the yeerks having another morph-capable host if they get there first, the Animorphs mount their rescue mission. But with too little information, too much water, and nothing on their side but the power Prince Elfangor gave them, can they rescue the trapped alien before the yeerks do?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Much thanks to JustAnotherGhostriter, who has generously loaned her awesome betaing skills and general support to this project from start to finish and without whom this would almost certainly not exist (and would certainly be much worse), and CompanionofaTimelord, as well as my innumerable temporary beta readers. Also thanks to Featherquillpen, who came up with the series title.

My name is Cassie. And I wasn't having a very good week.

It was a lot of little things, really. None of the Animorphs had really felt like talking to each other since we all nearly died horribly together the previous weekend breaking into a yeerk cargo ship, which left me sitting awkwardly alone at lunch skim-reading books about animals. I was behind on pretty much all my homework, because saving the world hadn't left me with all that much free time. My usually great relationship with my parents was a bit strained, although I couldn't let them know that, because I couldn't be entirely certain they weren't being controlled by alien invaders. And because of the horrible nightmares, I'd barely slept at all since the cargo ship thing. Or since we'd become Animorphs.

So when for the umpteenth time I was dragged along the infestation pier amongst the screams and sobs and desperate shouting of caged human and hork-bajir slaves, and I felt a pull, a call, from the yeerk-infested liquid below and I couldn't stop myself from diving into it as it suddenly changed to water and I was sucked down, down into the ocean, unable to resist that mysterious call, and I woke with a start... well, I knew I wasn't getting any more sleep that night.

That's why I was standing in the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic at eleven at night, barefoot and dressed in a leotard, trying to warm a frozen mouse in my hands.

“Don't look at me like that,” I told the wolf staring between the bars of her cage at the tiny corpse in my hands. “You're not even hungry, what do you want a mouse for?” I'd had a lot less sympathy for the wonder and majesty of wild wolves ever since I'd nearly been trapped in a genetic duplicate of her body.

The wolf blinked at me. She'd been with us long enough to know we weren't going to hurt her, but my hanging around in the middle of the night seemed to make her suspicious. I closed my eyes and focused.

_Mouse._

I pictured the form, the essence, of the cold little corpse in my hand washing through my body. Did it work? Normally I thought I could sort of feel something when acquiring animals, but I could be deluding myself. It's amazing how many of the things we think we feel are just invented by our own brains.

In a cage behind me, a squirrel suddenly started chattering and running about. I opened my eyes and looked up. “Calm down, Magilla, it's okay,” I told the squirrel, who paid no attention to me whatsoever. I scanned the rafters. Any number of things could be swooping in and out of the barn at night, but... I spotted the hawk in the half-light and smiled. “Tobias.”

[Cassie? Are you clutching a dead mouse in the dark?]

“Yes.”

[Why?]

“Science.” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I'd morphed while falling to my death, drowning, and being shot at, so it's not like I required total concentration, but it never hurt when trying something new.

Mouse.

I thought I felt a prickling sensation spread over my skin. “Tobias, am I changing at all?”

[Well it's a bit hard to be sure in the dark, but I'd have to say... no. What are you doing?]

I tossed the mouse to the sad-looking wolf. “I've been trying to figure out how this morphing thing actually works. I've been trying to morph between morphs for a couple of days... you know, without being human in-between?... but I've basically given up on that. I think it's impossible. Now I'm seeing if we can acquire DNA from dead animals. ”

[And the answer would be 'no'?]

“Can't be sure from one experiment. DNA could be damaged, freezing could've affected something... I'll try again next time I come across something freshly dead. I'd like to try with extracted DNA too, but given how hard that'll be to find... and of course, it's not really useful for us...” I was getting sidetracked. I fixed Tobias with a glare. “Did you come in here to eat my patients?

[And face your wrath? I'm not that brave. Just looking for stray rodents.]

“Thought you'd drop in for a squirrel sandwich?”

[Squirrel sandwich?] he said. [No, I was thinking barbecue. Why are you doing these experiments in the middle of the night?]

“Couldn't sleep. I came in to find a predator who keeps sneaking in and eating our patients. We've been trying to figure out how he's getting in.” I pointed to a gap between two crates. “There's a little hole there, as it turns out.”

[What'd you do, set up to keep watch all night?]

I laughed. “No, I morphed wolf and went for a sniff outside the barn. There are way too many scents around here to make that an easy task, but I found him. I just figured I'd try the frozen mouse thing while I was in here.” Although the whole thing was reminding me of one thing – I did not have an adequate array of morphs. Bird, lizard, horse and wolf was a good core set (I couldn't see myself needing the eel again but I guess it was possible), but I didn't have anything for low-light. Or anything that could move as a pack with the others in urban areas. Or anything for battle, really, although hopefully we wouldn't need to do too much direct fighting. Which was pathetic, since I had better access to animals than anybody. “What are you doing hunting in the middle of the night? You'll get yourself killed.”

[I hear something,] Tobias said, suddenly alert.

I strained my ears. Human ears are so lame. Almost any animal can hear better. But then I heard it, too. A voice.

"Is someone in there?"

"My father!"

Tobias disappeared into a shadow overhead. The barn door swung open. My father stood there, blinking sleepily and holding a flashlight. "Cassie? What are you doing out here?"

I glanced guiltily at the wolf, who had fortunately already eaten the evidence. "N-n-nothing, Dad. I-I-I just couldn't sleep. "

He nodded and walked closer. “Cassie, lately you've been...” he trailed off and stared at the floor. I could tell he wasn't all that awake. My father is one of those people who needs about an hour and three cups of coffee to wake up. “Is everything okay?”

I blinked as innocently as I could. “Why wouldn't it be?”

He sighed. “I mean the nightmares. The jumpiness. The...” he looked from his spandex-clad daughter to the animal-filled barn she was standing in in the middle of the night... “odd behaviour. Your mum and I are worried. You know that whatever's going on, you can talk to us, right?”

“I know, Dad,” I said. “Everything's fine.”

“Promise me you'll tell us if you need help.”

“I promise,” I lied.

“Right. Go to bed now.”

“Okay, Dad. Be right in.”

He left, shooting a concerned look over his shoulder. I sagged against the wall, put my head in my hands, and sighed. “That was really stupid of me.”

[The part where you run around experimenting with alien technology in the middle of the night?]

“And all the other weird behaviour I've let a potential Controller see, apparently. I should've just lay in bed or something, dreams or no dreams.”

[Nightmares, huh?]

I nodded. “You too? This isn't exactly prime hunting time for hawks.”

[Not nightmares, no. I think I'm the only one of us not getting them.]

“Birds don't dream, huh?”

[You'd think that, wouldn't you? But actually I was woken by really weird dreams.]

“So you do dream? But no nightmares? You must have the most resilient mind in the world.”

[Just one dream, actually. This weird voice. A voice without words, it just... pulls me...]

“... into the ocean.”

We stared at each other.


	2. Chapter 2

“No, I haven't had any weird dreams about the sea," Marco said. "I've had weird dreams about my sheets trying to strangle me. I've had weird dreams about falling from way up high and when I finally land I'm in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood talking to King Friday. I've had weird dreams about that woman on Baywatch…hmm, well, that does kind of involve the ocean, I guess."

"You have dreams about King Friday?" Rachel asked him. She put on a worried look. "I see." She shook her head slowly and made a ‘tsk, tsk’ sound.

"What? What's the matter with dreaming about King Friday?" Marco demanded.

Rachel shrugged. "All I'm going to say is you should think about seeing a counsellor before your condition worsens." Rachel turned so Marco couldn't see her and gave me a wink.

"Very funny," Marco sneered. But he still looked a little worried.

We were in Rachel's room the next day, after school. Even though we’d been fighting aliens for a while now, she somehow found the time to keep it looking like a page in a design magazine, from the artfully placed tiny pillows sitting at a stylish angle on the end of her bed to the colour-coordinated notes pinned to her little corkboard. I drifted over and read '"Don't think there are no crocodiles just because the water is calm.' - Malayan Proverb."

Just beside that was '"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.' - Sun Tzu."

In the good old days, Rachel would have had a bunch of quotes about being a good person or whatever. “A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.” “A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.”

Just a few weeks ago, when quotes like that littered the noticeboard, if I wanted to visit Rachel it wouldn't be to talk about strange shared dreams and the very real possibility that they were somehow connected to our livelihood. We would've been able to make plans openly instead of having to casually meet each other in halls and speak in code. We wouldn't have all checked to make sure we weren't followed, or checked to make sure that Rachel's mother and two sisters were out. We wouldn't have had Tobias scout the area for two hours in advance checking for anything unusual.

That's what our lives had become. That, and quotations full of paranoia and battle.

Jake hadn't said anything yet. Tobias and I had both told everyone about our strangely identical dreams.

“So nobody else has dreamed this,” I restated.

“No,” Rachel said, “none of us have. Are you sure it's not just a nightmare? I mean, I've been getting a lot of those.”

I shook my head. “No. My nightmares mostly involve Visser Three eating people, being shot at, falling to my death, or being trapped mid-morph. We've not been near the ocean. And Tobias doesn't dream, except about this.”

She raised a brow. “Cassie, I can handle aliens, but if you're trying to convince me you're getting prophetic dreams or something – ”

“We don't really have anything to suggest prophecy,” I said. “But Tobias, in case you haven't noticed, is telepathic now.”

[No more than any of you are when in morph,] he said.

“Actually according to my research your range seems to be slightly longer than any of ours,” I corrected, “and we don't sleep in morph.”

"I think,” Jake said, “I have something that may be interesting." He pulled a videocassette out of his bag.

"Cool. Let's watch a movie," Marco said.

"Not a movie," Jake said. "I guess no one else watched the late news last night?"

"I was busy watching my taped reruns of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," Marco said, giving Rachel a sly look. "Last night it was the one where it was a beautiful day in the neighborhood."

Jake rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, the way he'd done a million times before when Marco said something irrelevant or annoying. "Rachel, can we go downstairs and use your VCR?"

"Sure," Rachel said.

We trooped down the stairs. Except for Tobias, who fluttered down above our heads.

"Hey, Tobias," Marco said, "I've been meaning to ask you, are hawks like seagulls? I mean, do they poop while they're flying?"

[Depends on who's down below,] Tobias shot back. [Let me just put it this way - if you get on my nerves, you'd better buy a hat.]

Down in Rachel's living room, Jake turned on the TV and popped in his cassette.

"There was just this one small story," he narrated, as, on the screen, an old guy in a bathing suit held up a piece of what looked like metal.

"So now we're interested in hairy old guys who should be wearing shirts?" Marco asked.

"This old guy says he found that on the beach. It washed up during the storm a couple of days ago. Watch."

The camera focused on what looked like a jagged piece of metal, about two feet long and one foot wide. As the camera zoomed in, I saw what looked like letters. Only they weren't any alphabet I had ever seen. Jake paused the tape.

"Okay... so?" Marco prodded.

Jake sighed. "So the night the andalite landed, when I went inside his ship to get the cube that gave us our morphing powers, I saw writing."

I felt a chill creep up the back of my neck.

"I could be wrong, I mean, I'm not some expert," Jake said. "But I think it was that same alphabet. Those same kinds of letters."

Suddenly no one was laughing. Not even Marco.

"I think what washed up on the beach is a piece of an andalite ship," Jake said.

“Uh-huh,” Marco said, “and we started the meeting with dream-talk instead of this because...?”

I squinted at the writing. I wasn't confident that Jake would be able to recognise an alien alphabet after seeing it once in circumstances where there were far more important things to worry about. But it certainly looked like no alphabet I'd ever seen. If I could record some of the letters I could search the school library...

The letters swam in my vision. Suddenly, without warning, I felt the ground swirl beneath me. I fell straight back, not even caring that Jake caught me in his arms just before I hit the carpet.


	3. Chapter 3

I was falling, falling, falling.

Falling into the sea.

Splash! I hit the water. But still I fell. Down and down and down through blue-green, sunlit layers of water. Light disappeared, but there were still impressions of force and depth and other strange sensations I couldn't process pressing on my mind.

[I am here,] a voice called to me. [I am here. I cannot survive much longer. If you hear me... come. If you hear me... come.]

Suddenly I opened my eyes. I stared up at Jake's concerned face.

Glancing across the room, I saw Marco with the telephone to his ear, preparing to dial. Rachel was crouched on the other side of me, Tobias cradled in her arms. He wasn't moving.

"She's awake!" Jake said.

"Better still call an ambulance," Rachel said.

"No!" Marco snapped, "Not unless we know she's hurt. It's too big a risk."

Rachel's eyes flared the way they do when someone tells her something she doesn't want to hear. "Call nine-one-one," she said tersely.

"No, Rachel, he's right, and I'm okay," I said. I sat up. My head felt a little woozy, but I was all right. “How long was I out?”

“A couple of minutes.” Rachel glanced down at Tobias in her arms. I sat up and checked for breathing. I might be new at fighting aliens, but I could certainly do bird first aid.

“He's alive. Judging by what happened to me he's probably gonna wake up any – ”

A rustle of feathers and movement. Rachel cried out, mostly in surprise I think, as Tobias shot out of her arms and into the corner of the room. He landed on a CD rack and flared his feathers, puffing himself up to look bigger. A hawk response to a threat.

"Everybody stand still," I said quickly. "It's okay, Tobias, you were just out for a minute there."

He quickly gained control over the hawk instincts. [That was strange,] he said. He looked at Rachel's arm which, I noticed, was bleeding. [Sorry.]

“It's ok.”

"It was an actual voice this time,” I said, trying to steer us back to the matter at hand. “Or at least I heard thought-speak."

[Me, too,] Tobias confirmed.

"Okay, now this is getting weird," Rachel said. "Because at the same time I thought I kind of felt something."

"Yeah," Jake agreed. Marco nodded.

[I know this sounds crazy, but... but it's like someone is sending out a distress signal. Like they’re calling for help.]

"It was definitely a distress signal,” I agreed. “They said 'I cannot survive much longer. If you hear me, come.' Not much room for interpretation there.”

[Only this someone is in the water, or under the water, or something,] Tobias continued.

I nodded. "Seeing that video, seeing that writing, it was like suddenly the message grew stronger."

"Or it may have just been a coincidence," Jake said. "This isn't a dream. I don't know what it is, but it isn't a dream. Even I halfway saw something. This is some kind of a communication. "

"Well, this is all very interesting," Marco said, "but so what? I mean, are we getting some kind of psychic message from the Little Mermaid? What are we supposed to do about it?"

Jake looked closely at me. "Cassie? Was the voice in your dream a human voice?"

I was startled by the question. I hadn't really thought about it. I actually laughed. "When you asked me, the first thing that popped into my head was no, it isn't human." I laughed again.

[It's not human,] Tobias said suddenly. [I understand the meaning of what it's saying, but it's not human. It's not 'speaking' in words, really.]

"So what is it?" Rachel asked. "Yeerk?"

I let my mind drift back to the dream. I tried to hear the sound in my head again. "No, not yeerk. It reminds me of something... of someone."

[Prince Elfangor,] Tobias blurted.

I snapped my fingers. "Yes! That's it! It reminds me of the andalite. When he first thought-spoke to us. I didn't really notice at the time, but his words were less... literal than ours, you know? Only this voice was even more so. Somehow."

"The andalite," Marco muttered. He looked away. I knew he was remembering. We all were.

"Yes," I whispered. "Tobias is right. It's an andalite. That's who is calling to us from the sea. An andalite."

For a few minutes no one said anything.

Then Rachel said, "He died trying to save us." She looked defiantly at Marco. "I know that doesn't mean anything to you. But the andalite died trying to save Earth."

Marco nodded. "I know. And you're wrong, Rachel. That means plenty to me."

"Yeah? Well, if there's some andalite calling for help, I'm going to try and help him," Rachel said.

I looked over at Jake and we shared this look, like "Oh, big surprise, Rachel is ready to go." I hid my smile and Jake kept a straight face.

"Tobias?" Jake asked. "What do you say?"

[I don't know if I should have a vote. I'm the one person here who isn't going to be much help dealing with water. Besides, you guys all know how I'd vote.]

It was my turn. "I can't just ignore someone crying out for help.”

We all looked at Marco. I could see Rachel getting angry, like she was ready to jump all over Marco if, as usual, he disagreed.

Marco just grinned. "I really hate to do this. I really hate to disappoint you all." Then he grew serious. "But I was there at the construction site, same as all of you. I was there when Visser Three - " Suddenly his voice choked. "What I mean is, if there's an andalite who needs anything, I'm there."

Our first ever unanimous vote. I almost felt like we should celebrate somehow.

Jake nodded. “So we get ourselves some water morphs and we go rescue this andalite.”

“How?” Marco asked.

Jake frowned. “What do you mean?”

Marco rolled his eyes and spoke slowly, as if Jake was two years old. “Well, the ocean, you see, is quite big. And what we're basically going on here is that the andalite is somewhere in the ocean. Probably. Even if we assume that they're near the local beach – and there's no reason to assume that, because tides can drag wreckage a surprising distance – that's still way too much area to grid search in any morph or with any equipment.”

I looked at Tobias. “Did you get a sense of... anything else, with the voice?”

[Nothing I understood. There was a lot of... feelings and pressures and... well, it felt like a tiny version of what Elfangor gave me at the construction site, except that I think Elangor related it in a way that I'd be able to understand over time. But if you mean did I get a jumble of nonsensical alien data, then yes.]

I nodded. “Me too. Tobias is right, a lot of it is meaningless, but it was confusing and the signal wasn't very strong.” I bit my lip. I didn't have a _good_ plan, but I had _a_ plan. “With a stronger signal, we might be able to make sense of some of it.”


	4. Chapter 4

“You do realize that if we go down to the beach because of that news story, some Controllers will probably be down there, too?" Marco asked for about the tenth time.

"Yes, Marco," Jake said patiently. "But maybe Cassie and Tobias can get some feeling from being closer to the sea." He glanced furtively around the corner and pulled his shirt on.

“Well, how about the fact that it's going to look really weird if a teen and a red-tailed hawk suddenly pass out on the beach? Is that important?” Marco is the only person I've ever seen angrily tie a shoelace.

We were at the Gardens. We'd waited until just before closing time before I'd sauntered through the gate with a large backpack full of our clothes, so by the time the others flew in and demorphed, the only real danger was the occasional cleaner passing by.

“It's a risk we have to take, Marco,” I said. I was playing lookout. “You can go home if you want.”

Marco looked at me like I was an idiot, but didn't respond. "So let me get this straight - we are now making decisions based on Tobias and Cassie's dreams, right?" he said to Jake. "And yet my dreams are totally ignored. The fact that I once dreamed about staying home and watching TV in total safety, that means nothing, right?"

"Right," Jake said flatly.

"Well, how about my dream of living long enough to get a driver's license?"

Jake gave Marco an exasperated look. "Marco, you can turn into a bird and fly. You could do it right now. Why would you care about driving a car a few years from now?"

"The babes," Marco said instantly. "Duh. You can't pick up girls when you're a bird." He glanced overhead, where we could see just the hint of dark wings against the canopy of stars.

"No offense, Tobias. The wings are great, but I'm thinking of something bright red with about four hundred horsepower."

"Why Cassie and Tobias?" Rachel wondered aloud, examining her hastily-donned makeup in the mirror. "Why would they get these images so clearly and the rest of us barely felt anything?"

Jake shook his head. "I don't know. I mean, okay, say you're an andalite. And you want to call for help. Who do you want to come and rescue you? Other andalites, obviously."

"Tobias isn't an andalite, and neither am I," I pointed out.

"I know," Jake said. "But maybe this communication, whatever it is, is tied into the ability to morph. You know, like morphing ability makes you able to 'hear' it. Or at least tied to their telepathy, which seems to be tied to morphing. That way, only andalites would be able to receive the call for help."

"Which still doesn't explain why Tobias and I – "

"Maybe it does," Marco interrupted, serious again. "Look, Tobias is permanently in morph. And Cassie, you're the one who has the most talent for morphing. Besides, you know you like animals more than humans, so it's like you're halfway into morph, anyway." He glanced at Rachel. “Are you putting on makeup? You know you'll be morphing again in about ten minutes, right?”

I narrowed my eyes. “For the last time, I don't have a 'talent', I just bother to learn animal physiology. And practise. I bet you don't morph at all outside of missions, do you?”

Jake rolled his eyes in the near-darkness. “Alright Cassie, which way to the dolphins?”

I led the way out into the park. “Still not happy about this,” I pointed out. “I'm not sure this is... ethically right. Dolphins, I mean.”

“We know, Cassie,” Rachel grumbled. “But there's nothing else here that suits our needs. Maybe you just need a parent who works at Ocean World instead.”

We cruised through the area where all the rides were, heading toward the wildlife park. Jake shook his head sadly, looking up at the monster roller coaster. "That used to be the coolest thing in the world to me," he said. "But ever since I morphed a falcon, it just hasn't seemed like any big deal. I mean, you're going maybe eighty miles per hour on a steel track. When I was a falcon I did like two hundred miles an hour in midair."

"This morphing stuff does kind of change things," Marco agreed. "I used to want to get all pumped up. Then I morphed into a gorilla, and it was like, why bother lifting weights? I can just become a gorilla and bench press a truck."

"I don't feel that way," Rachel said. "Being a cat made me more interested in gymnastics. I mean, as a cat I was just so totally, totally in control and graceful. Ever since then I've been trying to use that feeling. When I'm on the balance beam I try and remember that cat."

“And then you fall off just the same as always?" I teased.

"Oh, yeah," Rachel said with a laugh. She made little walking fingers in the air that then fell over. "Boom. I slip right off. But I feel confident while I'm falling off."

We reached the wildlife park entrance. The marine mammals are one of the first exhibits. There's a main building, then there are several outdoor tanks.

We went straight for the largest outdoor tank. There were bleachers all around it on three sides where people sat for performances. But now, the place was deserted. “We should see the handlers any minute,” I said, glancing around and trying not to look nervous at all. Just a bunch of kids hanging out next to a dolphin tank in a closed amusement park. Totally normal.

"So what's the difference between porpoises and dolphins?" Marco asked. "Both just fish, right?"

SPLOOSH!

The placid surface of the water exploded a few feet from us. Water sprayed across me.

"Oooooh!" we all said as one.

He flew straight up out of the water, like a sleek, pale gray torpedo. Eleven feet long from nose to tail. Four hundred pounds. He simply flew into the air, seemed to hang there, ten feet above the surface of the water, took a skeptical look at us, gave us his permanent wise-guy grin, and slid back beneath the water so smoothly that there was barely a ripple.

"That is a dolphin," I said to Marco.

"Okay, I like that. That is excellent," Marco said. "Did you see what he did?"

You know how really great athletes never look like they're even trying? Like Michael Jordan? How everything they do is perfect, and you know they must have practiced for a million hours, but they always look like, ‘Oh. No big deal. Of course I can fly through the air. Nothing to it.’

That's a dolphin in the water. Effortless. Perfect. Utterly in control.

Fish swim through the water. Sharks swim, tuna swim, trout swim, even people swim.

Dolphins don't just swim through the water. They own the water. The water is their toy. The water is one big trampoline and the dolphins bounce around like kids having a good time.

Just watching them makes you happy. It also makes you feel like you're just this clunky, awkward windup toy, jerky and stumbling and clumsy. Human beings may be the smartest creatures on Earth, but we sure are dorky compared to a lot of other species.

"He's trying to get me to give him some more fish."

We all spun around. It was one of the dolphin trainer, a woman named Eileen.

"Oh, hi, Eileen," I said.

“Cassie. Looking for your mom?”

“Hoping to get a lift home, yeah.”

She nodded toward the dolphin, who was just exploding out of the water again. This time he turned a neat little somersault. "Joey is the biggest con artist. He's always trying to get extra fish."

"He's amazing," I said.

"Yes, he is," Eileen agreed, with a look of pride.

I introduced Jake, Marco, and Rachel. "They're keeping me company until Mom finishes up. Jake's a huge dolphin fan.”

"Well, as you know, we have six dolphins here. Joey, whom you've met, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe, and Rachel. Hey, you guys want to feed them a little? You start throwing fish in the water and they'll all come over."

"It won't upset their schedule?"

"Nah. Just don't let Joey get it all. He's kind of pushy."

Eileen left us with a nice big bucket of fish.

"That is some nasty-looking fish," Marco commented.

"Once you morph into one of these dolphins, you won't think that," Rachel pointed out.

Marco gave her a skeptical look. "Do you realize that just a week ago, we were eels? Eels that were not that much different than these fish?"

He was right. But it wasn't something I wanted to think about. I've always been very involved with animals. But it is a whole different thing when you can become different animals.

I took a fish by the tail and tossed it into the water. Just as Eileen suggested, the rest of the dolphins showed up very quickly.

"Wow. Think these guys like to eat?" Rachel asked.

The dolphins put on quite a show. They obviously knew how to impress humans.

"It's just weird the way they grin at you," Marco commented. "I mean, it's like they actually think something's funny."

"And they make eye contact," Jake pointed out. "They look right at you, right in the eye. Most animals seem like they're looking past you, or just looking to see what you are. These guys look at you like maybe they recognize you from somewhere."

Jake leaned over the edge of the tank to stroke one of the dolphins. "Hi there. Do I know you from somewhere? Jake's my name."

The dolphin tossed his head back and forth like he was nodding ‘yes,’ chattering in his high- pitched dolphin voice.

"Okay, now that was weird," Rachel said. "It was like he was answering Jake."

"Are you so sure he wasn't?" I asked. "Dolphins are very intelligent. Not our kind of intelligence, but still, I guess they're one of the two or three smartest animals around."

"It will be strange morphing something so intelligent," Rachel said.

"Yes," I agreed. Strange, and… wrong, somehow. I felt a twisting in my stomach. "How is doing this any different than what the yeerks do?"

Rachel looked surprised. "Yeerks take over humans," she said. "Besides, they don't morph, they infest. We don't take over the actual animal, we just copy his DNA pattern, create a totally new animal, and then - "

"And then control the new animal," I said.

"It's not the same," Rachel insisted. But she looked troubled.

"Isn't it? Because we created it? That sort of thinking can lead down some pretty dark paths. But what I'm really interested in is, what happens when we demorph?” I bit my lip. “I mean, I didn't really think about it when we were doing lizards and cats and whatever, and I probably should have, but if we're morphing intelligent creatures it becomes a lot more crucial. We've all felt those instincts when we morph. How advanced do the brains need to be before we start feeling minds? And then killing them when we demorph?”

Jake and Rachel glanced at each other. Marco just rolled his eyes. “Uh-huh, can't possibly bring into and out of existence an animal in order to save our freaking species from aliens. Maybe we should let the yeerks have Earth, lest we hurt a dolphin.”

“Sarcasm isn't a reasonable argument, Marco. I thought you didn't even want to fight.”

“But you do, and I'm sick of you pretending that fighting doesn't involve risk and sacrifice. You can't fight nice.”

“Watch me.”

“We can't be sure that morphing an intelligent animal would even cause that sort of problem,” Jake said gently. “We might be worrying about nothing.”

“Maybe.”

“And even if we're not... well, I'm sorry, Cassie, but weighing up hypothetical newly-created dolphin minds against an andalite who's dying and needs our help?” Rachel added.

I nodded. “You're right. But we do this right. When we test this morph, _one_ person does it first, to check for a... a mind, or anything.”

We were nearly out of fish. I leaned over the side of the tank and patted the head of the nearest dolphin. Her skin was rubbery, but not at all slimy. Just like a wet rubber ball.

She grinned up at me, fixing me with one eye as she cocked her head to see me. I pushed away my doubts, closed my eyes, and concentrated on the dolphin. She became peaceful and calm, as animals always do during the acquiring process.

 _May I?_ I asked her silently. But of course she couldn't answer…


	5. Chapter 5

That night I dreamed again of the voice under the sea, calling for help. Only this time it sounded faint. Like a radio with the batteries growing weak. Was that my imagination? Was I even receiving the message still, or just dreaming of the memory?

And I dreamed of the dolphin in her tank at the wildlife park. The one they called Monica, although who knew if she had a true name of her own? How long had she been in that tank? How long since she had been free in the open sea? Which did she prefer?

I couldn't pretend that the idea of morphing a dolphin didn't excite me. My concern for the possible creation and abuse of new minds aside, it was hard not to see the potential morphing had for revolutionising animal care. Everything from the rehabilitation of injured animals to animal research to preserving habitats could benefit vastly from our ability to quite literally see through the eyes of other species.

But first, we had a planet to defend.

According to Tobias, the beach was crowded with Controllers who were trying to inconspicuously search amongst happy beach-going families. We decided to meet at the river instead. The river led out to sea, but we could practise the morph in privacy and head out to the ocean from there.

I couldn't duck out on my chores, so it was early afternoon by the time I could get to the river. It was an area I had been to before with my dad, a little park near a bridge. It's a good place for fishing. About half a mile away, the river empties into the ocean. The river is lined with trees along most of its length. Here and there are homes and private docks, but the spot we'd chosen was hidden from the bridge and from any houses.

"Hi, Cassie," Jake said, smiling at me.

"Hi, everyone," I said. I spotted a movement in one of the tree branches. "Hey up there, Tobias. How's it going?"

[The same old thing. You know how it is. It's a hawk-eat-mouse world out there. I'm going to be the timekeeper, watching the deadly two-hour limit,] Tobias said. [I'm the only bird in the world with his own watch.]

I looked closer and saw a very small digital timer strapped to one of his legs.

[Rachel put it on for me,] he explained. [ I'll be over water the whole time, so I figured it was fairly safe. No bird watchers around to see me and wonder 'Hmmm, when did red-tails start wearing Timexes?']

I nodded. “So long as we avoid fishing boats and suchlike.”

Jake said, "I figured we'd hide our clothes, then wade into the river a little way, then start morphing."

"Sounds good," Rachel said.

"Cassie? Will you go first?" Jake asked.

That was fair. I was the one who'd made a big deal over morphing intelligent animals. I quickly undressed and waded out into the water, gritting my teeth against the cold. Then I focused on the dolphin that was now a part of me.

The first change was my skin. It lightened from brown to pale gray. It was like rubber, tough but springy.

That was good. I wanted to hang on to my legs as long as I could. I wanted to change as many other aspects as I could before I had to drop down into the water.

I felt the odd crunching sound you get sometimes when bones are stretched or compressed. And right before my eyes - literally - my face bulged out and out and out still farther.

"Oh, man, that's definitely not attractive," Marco groaned from the shore. "Not a good look for you, Cassie."

I turned my monstrous, malformed grin on him. I didn't have a mirror, but I could guess how gross I looked. I had this huge, long bottlenose sticking out of my otherwise normal face. My skin was gray rubber. And when I felt behind me with my rapidly shriveling hands, I could feel the triangular blade of a dorsal fin rising out of my spine.

My arms were gone, replaced by two flat flippers, and I was now standing about ten feet tall, wobbling on my puny human-sized legs. It was time to let the rest of the morph proceed. I surrendered my human legs. Instantly I fell face forward into the water.

I was complete. The water was too shallow, though, and I was barely afloat. I kicked my tail, scraped across the sandy bottom, and finally surged out into deeper water.

I waited for the moment when the dolphin brain would surface, full of instinct-driven need and hunger and fear. The natural world is a dangerous place and its inhabitants knew it. I was ready to clamp down on any panic reaction.

But it wasn't like that at all. This mind was not filled with fear and need.

This mind was like a little kid. I tried to listen to it, to understand its needs and wants. To prepare myself for a sudden onslaught of crude, primitive animal demands. Flee! Fight! Eat! But that didn't happen. I felt hunger, yes. But not the screaming, obsessive need of a lizard, or of Rachel's shrew. There was no fear. Curiosity and wariness, yes. But that was a general background of caution that I could handle and that, if things went wrong, would probably save my life.

And fortunately, I did not find a true thinking, conscious mind. I breathed a sigh of relief.

The dolphin wanted to play. I wanted to chase fish, catch them, and eat them, but that would be a game. I wanted to race across the surface of the sea, and that would be a game, too. I reminded myself to ask Rachel about the cat's mind later; it might be a mammalian predator thing, although I'd felt no such thing with the wolf.

[Cassie?] I heard Tobias's thought-speech in my head. [Are you okay?]

Was I okay? I asked myself. [Yes, Tobias. I'm... happy. I feel like… like I don't know. Like I want you to come and play with me.]

[Play with you? Mmmm, I don't think so, Cassie. Hawks don't do water.]

[Come on, everyone!] I called to the others. [Come on! Let's go! Let's swim to the ocean! I want to play!]

With that, the others waded out and morphed, and soon we were a tiny pod.

I didn't like the river. I wanted the ocean. I could feel it close by. I could feel it in the way the current rushed me forward. I could feel it in some deep, hidden part of my dolphin being.

The ocean. I wanted it. It was my place. It was where I should be.

We swam in a school, the four of us, with Tobias flying overhead.

We raced the river's current, and soon I could taste the salt. I could feel the saltwater on my skin. It was as if I had opened the door of a toy store with every toy on Earth, and I had all the time in the world to play.

I saw my friends around me, swift, pale shapes in the water. Sleek gray torpedoes as they rose to breathe.

I lived in both worlds - the sea and the air. I saw the blue-green of the ocean, the pale blue and white of the sky. I slipped back and forth through the bright barrier that separated them.

Jake went zipping by, shooting up from beneath me to explode into the air. I heard the slap of his belly as he landed. It was a game! I dove deep, down to where the sandy floor sloped toward depths even I could not explore. Then I powered my tail, steadied my flippers, and drove hard toward the surface. Above me I could see the shimmering, silver border between water and air.

Faster! Faster! I was a missile.

[Yah haaaaah!]

I shattered the barrier of the sea and hurtled up into the sky. I felt warm wind on my skin, instead of cold water. I hung, poised in midair, almost floating above the surface of the water. Now the barrier was beneath me. I pointed my nose toward it and dropped from the sky.

[Aaaaah!]

The water wrapped around me, welcoming me back.

[Is this cool, or what?] Marco laughed in my head.

[This is cool,] I answered.

[This is beyond cool,] Rachel chimed in.

[Let's all do it at the same time!] Jake said.

The four of us dove deep. The ocean floor was still far below us, rippling sand dotted with rocks and clumps of seaweed.

Near the ocean floor we levelled off, practically scraping our bellies on the bottom. And then, aiming at the silver barrier once again, we shot upward, racing each other, ecstatic from the joy of our own bodies' strength.

We launched into the air like a well-trained team of acrobats.

We flew, side by side, exhaling and refilling our lungs with warm air.

Life was joy. Life was a game. I wanted to dance. I wanted to dance through the sea.

_This is wrong._

I ignored the nagging feeling of unease. There was nothing I could not do. There was nothing I could ask of my body that it would not give me. Racing, spinning, turning, diving, skimming the surface, flying up into the sky.

I wasn't just in the sea. I was the sea.

[Are you guys just going to play all day?] It was Tobias. [You realize you've wasted forty- five minutes already?]

Minutes? I laughed. Who cared about minutes?

[Look, guys? I know you think the dolphin mind hasn't affected you, but it has. You need to get a grip. You have a reason for being here.]

A reason. Yes. I forced myself to ignore the glittering waves and my podmates dancing around me.

[You're trying to get a telepathic signal, or find a piece of andalite ship or something.]

Right. Yes. That's why we were in morph in the ocean. The signal was in the ocean. And being in morph might make us more receptive, if my preliminary research on thoughtspeak range was accurate. I'd done most of my testing with Tobias though, and it might depend on the individual...

Hey, Jake was diving! I could dive deeper!

[Guys! Focus! Spaceship!] Tobias was starting to sound panicky.

[Find the spaceship. Cool,] Rachel said. [I bet I can find it first!]

[No way!] Jake said instantly. [I'll find it.]

[Where is it? Let's go look!] Marco said.

[Good grief,] Tobias said. [You're like a bunch of five-year-olds.]

But I was too distracted to care. [Hey. Can you guys do this?] I concentrated, and suddenly, from someplace in my forehead, came a series of loud, very rapid clicks, almost like loud static.

Oh. _Wow_.

People often compare echolocation to sight. I suppose it's similar in practical terms; they both show where objects are and allow you to navigate. But echolocation isn't some poor substitute for sight any more than normal hearing is. It's a totally different sense. I could... feel... the proximity of objects. I could feel different things about them, sort of like colours and textures but different, less detailed than sight but no less real. My podmates stood out as having one quality, the sand beneath a totally different one.

And something in it was familiar.

You know how sometimes you'll be walking along and you'll catch an unusual scent, and you'll recall perfectly what you were doing and thinking the last time you smelled it? Even though you might've only ever smelled it once or twice in your life? I knew that I'd heard echolocation off sand before. But the circumstances were... confusing. I fired off another round of clicks.

Right. Yes. I did know the echo-image of sand, but it was different sand, in a different place.

[Guys? You know how Tobias and I got a lot of information from the distress signal that we couldn't really understand? I think I just figured out some of it. It's echolocation images.]

[Okay, there is no way that andalites echolocate,] Marco said. [I will not believe that.]

[Nothing I got from Elfangor suggests that they can,] Tobias agreed. [But that was pretty much all need-to-know yeerk stuff.]

[It might be sonar?] Marco suggested. [That's basically the same thing, right?] He released his own set of clicks. [Um, guys? There's something out there.]

A barrage of clicks as we all tried to see what he was talking about. Somehow, the others' echolocation didn't interfere with my own. Why? I'd have to look into that. I immediately knew what he meant. Further away, on the edge of our range, something... bad. Something that made me feel uneasy. I searched in my dolphin mind, deep down in the places where instinct had been hidden beneath layers of intelligence.

Then a picture just popped into my consciousness.

[I know!] I cried, as if I had just won a contest. [ It's a shark!]

Suddenly we weren't playing anymore. The others had all found the same instinct in themselves. The echolocation indicated that there was a large shark nearby.

And we knew one thing for sure. We didn't like sharks.


	6. Chapter 6

[You know, I hate to sound like the only sensible person - so to speak - ] Tobias said, [but you aren't here to fight sharks!]

[He's right,] I agreed. [Dolphins don't attack sharks unless the sharks attack first.]

[Wait... I'm getting more echoes,] Rachel interrupted. [There's more than one shark. And there's something bigger, too.]

I reached out with my echolocation sense and "felt" the sea ahead of me. [You're right,] I said. [Several sharks. And a... a whale.] That made me angry, both dolphin-me and human-me. [They're attacking a whale! Do you know how many species of whale are endangered?!]

[You guys do what you want,] Rachel said. She sounded upset too. [ I'm going in.]

[Oh, there's a big surprise,] Tobias said with weary affection.

The four of us lanced forward, faster than ever, toward the whale in distress.

[I see them,] Tobias reported from the sky above. [Straight ahead of you. Looks like four, maybe five sharks and a big - really, really big - whale. Did I mention big? Wow. Big. Also, don't forget your time limit guys. Seriously, this is not a good fight to get into.]

We were steaming through the water when I caught sight of my first shark. He was bigger than me, maybe twelve feet long, with faint vertical stripes.

He was too excited by the hunt to notice me. Until it was too late. With every bit of speed and power I could get from my tail, I rammed the tiger shark in his gill slits.

WHOOOOMP!

It was like hitting a brick wall. My beak was strong, but the shark was made of steel or something.

I fell back, dazed. But as I tried to collect myself I saw that a trail of blood was billowing from the shark's gills.

I swam beneath him, and then I saw the huge shape of the whale. He was a humpback, more than forty feet long. Each of his long, barnacle-encrusted flukes was bigger than me. He was trying to surface to breathe, but sharks were attacking, tearing at the soft, vulnerable flesh of his mouth.

Suddenly, from the murky depths, Jake and Rachel zoomed upward, like missiles aimed at the sharks.

WHOOMP! Rachel hit her target.

Jake's shark twisted just in time. Jake scraped across the shark's sandpaper skin, and before he could get clear, the shark was after him.

[Jake! He's on your tail!]

[I got him!]

[Look out! Coming up on your left, Marco!]

They were as fast as we were, as maneuverable as we were, and they had teeth and sandpaper skin that we didn't have. What did we have? What could we use?

Human intelligence, yes, not really worth noting, we were already trying to employ that. Healing, so it didn't matter how injured we got so long as we could demorph.

[He's on me! He's on me!]

[Aaaaarrrrggghh!]

[Marco!]

[I can't see! Where is he?]

[Cassie! Below you, look out! Look out!]

We breathed air; we were close enough to the surface for that to be no disadvantage, but the sharks breathed water, so they wouldn't have to surface at all, they just...

Needed to move forward to breathe...

And sharks were maneuverable, but they couldn't swim backwards...

[Whoever's to my right, get on the other side of this shark and force it against the whale,] I said.

[How will – ]

[Trust me!]

Jake and I got on either side of the shark and swam it right into the whale. It didn't try to stop us, but it did thrash around, its rough skin cutting up our rubbery skin and filling the water with more dolphin blood. [We need to hold it as still as possible,] I told him. Forcing ourselves to ignore the pain, we did so.

Around us, the bloody fight continued. Somebody was ramming an already-bleeding shark's gills, who suddenly decided that the meal was more trouble than it was worth and swam off. The shark that Jake and I were holding stopped struggling and began, slowly, to sink.

[What just...]

[No oxygen,] I said. [If a shark can't move water through its mouth it can't breathe. I'm not... I'm not completely sure it will survive.] No time to worry about that now. Two sharks were down; it was three on two, the odds were in our favour.

Wait, three on two?

[We're missing somebody!] I cried, as Jake and I dove in preparation to ram the sharks that the remaining dolphin was fighting. [Who are we missing?]

[It isn't me,] Rachel responded, sounding distracted. Marco!

Jake and I ran straight for the sharks. Wham! Two injured, dazed-looking sharks gave up and swam away, leaving a trail of blood.

We were all bleeding rather a lot. We'd need to do something about that before we attracted even more attention.

[Marco!] Jake called. [Marco, can you hear me?!]

[I... I think I'm hurt.] Marco's voice. Pained.

I looked for him. He was drifting in the water, almost motionless, twenty yards away. We all swam over, crowding around him.

Then I saw the wound. I think I would have screamed, if I could have. His tail had almost been bitten off. It was hanging by a few jagged threads. It was useless.

We were miles out in the ocean. And Marco could not hope to swim back.

[Demorph,] the three of us said in unison.

[I, uh, I can't actually swim that well.] At least he was sounding more alert, having to talk to us. [Aaaahhh,] he added. [Oh, man. That's a major ouchie. Ahh, ahh!]

[What's happening?] Tobias called down. [Marco sounds hurt.]

[He is,] Jake answered tersely.

[Oh, man, I don't want to die as some fish,] Marco cried. [I don't want to die out here. My mom drowned. I'm going to die just like she did. My dad...]

[Demorph!]

[And drown?]

[We'll support you. Dolphins are great at supporting drowning humans, they're famous for it. Now get human before you bleed to death!]

We formed a circle around him, the three of us, with Tobias drifting overhead and the big humpback resting alongside.

Then Marco began to change. Arms sprouted from his flippers. His face flattened down, with his wide, grinning dolphin mouth shortening to form Marco's own lips. His skin turned pink and his morphing suit appeared.

His shattered, injured tail split in two. Legs formed from the halves, toes appeared. Human toes. At the end of human legs.

[He did it!]

"Yeah, I did it. And now I'm drowning!"

[Here,] I said, swimming beside him. [Grab onto me.]

He wrapped his arms over my back, and I held him up to the air.

Then I noticed something strange. It was like the ocean floor was rising to meet me. No. It was the humpback. He had dived beneath us, and was rising slowly, slowly to the surface.

[Look out! The whale!] Rachel yelled.

But at that moment the most incredible part of an incredible day happened.

My mind, human, dolphin, both minds, opened up like a flower opening to the sun. And a silent, but somehow huge, voice filled my head, it spoke no words. It simply filled every corner of my mind with a simple emotion.

Gratitude.

The whale was telling me that it was grateful. We had saved it. Now it would save our schoolmate.

It's not that I'm insensitive to things like instinct and intuition. As a matter of fact, people tend to assume I rely very heavily on them, no matter how many times I explain that my “intuitive” conclusions are the result of critical thinking and logic. Something in the way I speak, I think. But I don't trust intuition. I don't trust knowledge if I don't know where it comes from. Intuition is the result of a cobbled-together subconscious handbook of rules of thumb on how to interpret and process vast amounts of incomplete information; it helps guide our decisions and behaviour when there is too much information, or hard-to-quantify information, or not enough time to analyse things properly. Intuition evolved as a mechanism of survival; it's cautious, it keeps us alive. But it is wildly inaccurate.

So I was a little freaked out by complicated emotional concepts being communicated so accurately by a whale. It's not that I had any doubt over a humpback's ability to feel gratitude or reciprocation. I just never would've expected them to be able to communicate it so well to another species. And the way the concepts wordlessly unfolded in my head... I couldn't be sure how much was the whale speaking, and how much was me projecting. I couldn't tell my own conclusions from what was actually being said.

[Back away,] I told Rachel and Jake. [It's okay.]

[Yeah,] Rachel agreed, sounding amazed. [I hear it, too. Or feel it. Or whatever.]

The humpback rose beneath a sputtering Marco. The broad leathery back lifted him up. And when I looked again, I saw Marco, sitting nervously on what could have been a small island, high and dry above the choppy waves.

Tobias fluttered down and rested beside him.

I didn't know how to communicate back. I sort of... willed my gratitude to the whale. Andalite thought-speak was more feelings and concepts than words... could I do that? Would it work?

[Thank you,] I told the whale, injecting my mental tone with as much gratitude as I could.

His answer was a sort of benign acceptance of my thanks. And a question. The whale had lived a long time. He had seen dolphins before, many times. He'd seen the occasional human. But he'd never seen a dolphin turn into a human.

I didn't have much faith in his ability to understand the concept of morphing, and even less faith in my ability to communicate it. Instead I thought to him, [We are different.]

Yes, the reply seemed to be, we were something new. But not the only new thing.

[What else?]

He showed me. Impressions that I vaguely understood to make an image. A bubble under the ocean, containing a broad, grassy plain, with trees and a small stream. All of it underwater. And across the grass ran an animal that was part deer, part scorpion, part almost human. Something clicked; bundles of information from the distress call resolved themselves and slotted into the image; I could see what the area looked like, what echolocation would make it sound like, where the water currents were. I have no idea how much of the picture was told to me by the whale and how much was from the distress signal. But the image was clear and unmistakeable. An andalite, in a ship, trapped under the ocean.

[Where?]

In distance and currents, he told me. I couldn't tell what was new information, and what was just me understanding what the andalite had already sent. Maybe it was all the andalite's information, only making sense through a dolphin's perspective. Maybe it was all the whale. It was impossible to know.

Marco had crawled to the water and was composing himself to morph again. I couldn't imagine how difficult that was for him, returning to a morph in which he was badly injured just minutes ago. But as far as we were from the shore, there was no choice.

The rest of us remorphed too, both to stop bleeding into the ocean and to reset the time limit.

We headed for shore, tired but alive. There was a lot to think about. Like the implications of the communication abilities of humpback whales. And how we were going to rescue the andalite.

And how I was going to explain what had happened with the whale without sounding completely insane.


	7. Chapter 7

The first thing I did when I got home was write down the whole experience with the whale. My own thoughts would corrupt the memories, I knew, making them next to worthless. Human memories aren't very reliable. In fact, my memories of the event were probably already nearly useless. How much had the whale said, and how much had I imagined? How much had simply been information from the distress signal unfolding in my mind? How much had I forgotten, or invented?

Whales certainly merited further study.

After we saved our planet from aliens.

The next day I went to see Marco.

He and his dad live in a garden apartment complex. One of the older ones, on the far side of the big neighborhood where Jake and Rachel both live. I'd only been over there a couple of times. I think Marco is kind of embarrassed because he doesn't have much money.

He used to live in a house just down the street from Jake. But that was when his mother was still alive, and before his father had a breakdown and quit his job.

I knocked on the door. From inside I heard Marco's voice. "Dad, there's someone at the door. Put on your bathrobe, okay?"

There was a delay, and then the door opened. Marco looked annoyed.

"Cassie. What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to talk to you."

"To me? What about?"

"About yesterday," I said.

He hesitated. "Look, I'm spending the day with my dad, okay? We're thinking maybe we'll... you know, do something together."

"That's good," I said. Over Marco's shoulder I could see his father. He was wearing a bathrobe and sitting on the couch. He was staring at the TV. That was normal for any dad, I guess, on a weekend morning. But I had the feeling that Marco's dad was always sitting right there in front of the TV.

"I'll be quick. I just want to talk for a minute. Can I come in?"

"No, no," he said hastily. He stepped outside onto the concrete breezeway. Down below us was a swimming pool. It was drained and closed. Leaves covered the bottom.

"Marco, I wanted to talk to you about yesterday."

"What about it?"

"You could have been killed.”

Marco rolled his eyes. "That's it? This whole thing we're doing, this whole Animorph thing, it's been dangerous right from the start. It's insanely dangerous. What else is new?"

“Well, nobody's been this gravely injured before.”

“No, we've just been...” he started counting off his fingers, like he was keeping a tally. “Chased by killer aliens before we'd figured out morphing, shot at more times than I care to recall, nearly trapped as wolves or, worse, half-wolves, lost one teammate to a morph already, nearly drowned, and I'm going to stop trying to find examples now because it's making me scared and sad. This is exactly what I was getting at when I said that we should leave this to trained soldiers. Do you see where I'm coming from now?”

I shrugged. I had always seen where he was coming from. I just didn't agree that five children were more important than a species. Elfangor had told us to warn humanity, but we couldn't without proof.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I'm fine.”

“You're lying.”

“Of course I'm lying. We're all getting good at that.”

“Well, anyway, I just wanted to say that I'm sorry. It was my idea and my... dream... that dragged us out there. We should've tried something safer.”

"Oh, I get it. You don't like responsibility?"

I winced. Was that it? Was I afraid of taking responsibility? "I don't want to get my friends killed."

"And let me assure you your friends don't want to get killed, either," Marco said with a laugh. "I am completely opposed to getting killed." He grew serious, even sad. "But you know what? Sometimes bad things happen. That's the way it is. I said I'd go on the mission. I am one hundred per cent behind rescuing this andalite, if we can. And that entails risk."

I leaned against the rail, looking down at the dismal empty pool. "I see things die all the time," I said. "Animals, I mean. Sometimes you can't save them. Sometimes we even have to put them down. End their suffering." But that had always been my Dad's choice. He'd made the hard decisions. I just followed instructions.

"Look, here I am, all alive," Marco said, tapping his chest. "Get over it. I didn't have to go. It was my choice."

"Were you scared?"

For a while he didn't answer. He just came over and leaned on the railing beside me. "I'm scared all the time now, Cassie," he said at last. "I'm scared to fight the yeerks, and I'm scared of what will happen if I don't. I look at Tobias, and what happened to him scares me to death. What if I get stuck in morph someday? And most of all, I am scared of... of him."

I didn't have to ask who Marco meant by him. Visser Three.

"That first time, in the construction site, when he killed... when he murdered the andalite." Marco made a twisted smile. "I see that in my head every day. And the yeerk pool." He shook his head. "That's something I would like to forget, too."

“You and me both.” I paused for a moment, wondering if I should continue. “The yeerk pool, when that Controller grabbed me... well, yeerks are mind-readers. Any one of us getting captured dooms the rest of us, you realise? I couldn't let them have the secrets in my mind. So my plan was, when he pushed my head down, I was going to... make sure no yeerk got a chance to read my mind.”

Marco didn't react for a moment. Then, slowly, he said, “That's a level of sacrifice higher than anybody would have asked of you, Cassie.”

“What, one human life to protect Earth's defenders? It's downright cheap. The alternative was selling all of you out.”

“That wouldn't have been your fault.”

“Whose fault it is doesn't change the fact that you all would've been captured or killed. What I'm trying to say here is that I do understand your point about this being too big and too dangerous for us. I get it. I just don't agree. I don't agree because there are five of us and the stakes are our whole planet. There is nothing, literally nothing that they can do, no way in which we can fail, that doesn't make the fight worth it so long as we have any chance of succeeding at all.” That wasn't technically true if our chances of success were low enough, but it was hardly the time for impromptu probability calculations. “If we don't play, we lose automatically. We and our families will eventually be captured. Opting out of the fight won't make the fight go away.”

“It might keep us alive until the andalites get here.”

“Elfangor gave us this power because we he knew the andalites wouldn't get here in time. We need to delay the invasion, remember? This is bigger than us. Melissa loves her parents as much as you love your dad. The cafeteria lady cherishes her family as much as I cherish mine. And her freedom is just as important.”

He nodded. A nod of acknowledgement, not agreement. “Then you're not going to like what I found this morning. I was waiting to tell everyone together, but... look, I'll just show you. Wait here.” He ducked inside and returned a few seconds later with a newspaper. Flicking between two pages, he tapped a couple of articles. I skimmed them. One was about a guy who was going to be looking for some supposedly lost treasure ship off the coast. The other was a story about a marine biologist was going to be doing some underwater exploration off the coast.

"You're worried that we'll have to avoid these guys seeing a blue alien centaur."

“I'm more worried about who they are. All of a sudden our nearby ocean seems to be very interesting to people. Treasure hunters and an underwater exploration? At the same time?"

"Controllers?"

He nodded. "I think so. I think it's all a cover story to explain why two ships will be out there with lots of divers in the water. I think it's them, all right. And I think they're looking for the same thing you're looking for."

I felt weak. The image the whale had given me surfaced in my mind. And the faint cry in my dreams, the cry for help.

And Marco, torn in half. All of us bleeding.

“We're lucky to still be alive at all, aren't we?”

“Tell me about it. If we're going to rescue this andalite, we need a proper plan. And we need to work fast.”

“I know.” I started to walk away.

"You know what was strange about yesterday?" Marco said.

"What?"

"The sharks. They were so totally deadly. I mean, we worry about hork-bajir and taxxons and Visser Three. You kind of forget that right here on little old planet Earth there are creatures just as tough and dangerous. It would be funny if it wasn't some alien that ended up getting us, but some normal Earth creature."

I didn't think it was funny at all.

Marco grinned at my stone face. "Okay, not funny ha-ha. More like funny weird."

I shrugged. “Earth made us. We're part of it. Hopefully, we can be scary too.”


	8. Chapter 8

We gathered at Rachel's house that afternoon.

"Okay," Jake said. "Here's what we know. Or at least, what we think we know. First, we believe that somehow a surviving andalite, or maybe more than one andalite, is trapped out in the ocean."

"Hopefully andalites can hold their breath for a really long time," Marco joked.

"Second, Cassie believes she can find this andalite, thanks to the information from the whale."

Everyone kept a straight face for about ten seconds. Then, all at once, everyone cracked up.

"Information from a whale," Marco repeated, giggling.

[Have our lives gotten really weird, or is it just me?] Tobias asked.

"Weird? Weird?" Marco crowed. "The talking bird wants to know if getting information on the location of an alien from a whale, that you've just saved from sharks, by turning into dolphins… You're suggesting that's weird?"

Jake smiled. "Well, stay tuned. It just gets weirder. Cassie and I have been going over maps. She says the location we're looking for is pretty far out to sea. Too far for us to swim and still have any time left of our two-hour limit."

"Well, that's the ball game, isn't it?" Marco asked.

Jake nodded at Rachel. "I was talking to Rachel earlier and she has an idea."

Rachel stood up from her position lounging on the bed. "We hop a ride on a ship. First we morph into something like a seagull."

Marco groaned. "I hate plans that begin with the words 'first we morph.'"

"We morph into seagulls," she repeated, pointedly ignoring Marco, "then we fly out into the shipping channel. We land on a tanker or a container ship or something that's going the right direction. We morph back to human, rest up, let the ship get us closer, then jump over the side, morph to dolphin and go the rest of the way."

"Oh, well, when you put it that way, it sounds so easy," Marco sneered. "How about if we just walk over to Chapman's house and tell him to call Visser Three to finish us off? It's so much easier, and the results will be the same."

Jake sighed. "It is dangerous and risky, and there are about a hundred things that could go wrong. Plus, as Marco has told us, we have reason to think that Controllers will be out there, searching for the same thing we're searching for."

"This idea just gets better and better," Marco said.

"Let's put it to a vote," Jake suggested.

"I'm in," Marco said instantly.

A split second behind him, Rachel said her usual "I'm in."

Everyone stared open-mouthed at Marco.

"Just once I wanted to beat Rachel to it," he explained.

"Tobias?" Jake asked.

[I don't think I should vote. I have to sit this one out. I can't stay up that long with nowhere to set down. Sorry.]

"You had the dreams, just like Cassie," Jake pointed out. "Do you think we should do this or not?"

Tobias fixed his fierce glare on me. [Yes, Cassie and I both had the dreams. I have no reason to doubt them. And I think we owe the andalites.]

"Okay, looks like we go," Jake said briskly. "Tomorrow. First thing in the morning. We can't wait any longer. The longer we hold off, the greater the chance the yeerks will beat us to it."

We left Rachel's house. Marco split off in one direction. Tobias flew off to some unknown destination. Jake and I walked together for a while, even though it was out of his way.

"I think Tobias is feeling kind of left out," I said. "You should talk to him later, remind him of how many times he's helped us out."

"That's a good idea," Jake agreed.

We walked a little farther in silence. Eventually I asked, "This is really dangerous, isn't it?"

He nodded.

I glanced at him. It wasn't too long ago that he was Rachel's incredibly good-looking, nice, basketball-playing cousin who I couldn't stop thinking about. Now we were fighting aliens together. Tobias and Marco, people I hadn't known and had barely been able to recognise a month ago, were close friends I'd die to protect. Rachel, my best friend since childhood, had become a sister in arms with reserves of courage and determination that even I had never seen in her before. And Jake...

I stopped walking. I took his hand and held it between both of mine. "Jake?" I said.

"Yes?"

It was on the tip of my tongue, but then it seemed ridiculous to say it. So instead I said, "Look, don't ever get hurt, okay?"

He smiled that smile. "Me? I'm indestructible."

The way he said it, I almost believed him. But then, as he went his way and I headed toward home, I glanced up at the sky.

Against the blaze of sunset I saw a flash of russet tailfeathers. Tobias. Our friend, who had been trapped forever in a body not his own.

None of us were indestructible.


	9. Chapter 9

[Hey! Half a sandwich! It's salami!]

[Look over there. Is that a Jujubee?]

Fortunately, one thing we always have plenty of in the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center is seagulls.

[Pizza! Pizza! Part of the crust and it's one of those stuffed crusts!]

Seagulls are fishing birds, but they are also scavengers. So as we took wing and flew in a rush of white from the open hayloft, I noticed different things, felt different things, than the osprey did. My seagull mind was not searching for mice or scurrying animals. It was much more open-minded. My seagull intelligence looked for anything - anything - that could even possibly be food.

Fortunately, the gull brains were close enough to the other bird brains we'd all experienced that it was fairly easy to control them. We didn't waste a lot of time getting started.

Although, once we did get started, everyone was constantly pointing out food.

[Hey! Look! French fries on the ground.]

[Whoa! That's half a 3 Musketeers bar by that car!]

Sometimes you just have to accept the animal's basic mindset and go with it.

[There's the beach,] Jake said as we flapped and soared and flapped some more. It's easier being an osprey in some ways. Much less flapping. But seagulls did have the advantage that we could travel in a flock without looking suspicious.

Once we were out over the water, we could at least stop scanning for food. Mostly.

[Hey! Is that a bag of potato chips floating down there?]

We flew low, just a few dozen feet above the water. Not like hawks, who can ride the thermals up to the bellies of the clouds.

But Tobias wasn't much higher than we were now. There were no thermals over the water and he was having to flap a lot to stay aloft.

We flew on, skimming the choppy surface of the water.

[Hey, look,] Rachel said. [Over to the left.]

Sleek gray shapes sliced through the water, up, down, up, down, breaking the silvery barrier between sky and sea. It was a school of dolphins.

[You know, sometimes this is just so wonderful] Rachel said. [I mean, we're flying. We're flying! And later, we'll be like them, at home in the water.]

[Yeah, just us and the sharks,] Marco said darkly.

[Still, it is cool,] Rachel said.

[There's a ship up ahead,] Jake announced.

[You just now noticed it?] Tobias laughed. [Wow. Seagull eyes aren't exactly great, are they? It's a container ship called Newmar. It's from Monrovia. You want to know what color the captain's hair is?]

[Show-off,] Jake grumbled.

Spotting the boat myself, I instinctively dipped low. I berated myself a moment later-- what was I planning on doing, hiding between waves? – but by then I'd discovered something amazing. [Hey guys. Drop low. There's this sort of air cushion and you can just glide above the waves.]

So close to the ocean's surface, I found myself scanning for fish. It occurred to me that I'd never really thought of a seagull fishing. I knew they ate fish, but I'd only ever really seen them scavenging and begging for snacks at the beach. But most of their lives had nothing to do with humans and our scraps at all.

Few people truly appreciate how big the ocean is. “Two thirds or the Earth's surface” is just meaningless words to a monkey brain that can barely comprehend the size of a city. There is nothing as big as the ocean. It's like this entirely different planet, full of strange plants and fantastic animals. Most of it humankind has never even seen. Valleys and mountains and caves and broad, flat plains, all hidden from our sight.

All most humans ever saw was the shore, and maybe a vast blanket of water if they happened to glance out an aeroplane window. Even now, all I could see was the surface. As a dolphin I'd barely skimmed a tiny fragment of it. No one thing can experience the ocean, although whales probably came close.

But I could sense it out there. When I put my mind to it, really tried to comprehend, I could sense how vast it was, and how tiny I was.

It was hard, flying to catch up to the ship, even gliding along just above the waves. It was moving fairly fast, and by the time we were close I was exhausted.

The ship was gigantic, painted a rusty blue, with a deck longer than a football field. The superstructure was all crammed toward the back. That's where the crew would be, so we flew forward, hoping to find someplace private.

The deck was stacked with containers, big steel boxes like trailers. Row after row of them lined the deck, and we could see hundreds more down in the hold.

We settled in the narrow space between two rows of containers, far forward. It was like having walls all around us. Corrugated metal walls that went high over our heads.

[Tobias? How much time?] Jake asked.

Tobias twisted his head down to see the tiny watch strapped to his talon. [ It's been about an hour and a half.]

[Right, let’s get human. Keep sharp, everyone; we can bluff a bunch of kids in bathing suits at the ocean, but we can't bluff if we're caught mid-morph.] The space between the rows of containers was even narrower when we were fully human again.

"Brrr. It's chilly out here," I said. The steel deck was cold beneath my bare feet. And even though the sun was high in the sky, we were in shadow.

"Man, I swear, this is the worst thing about morphing," Marco said. "Can someone please figure out how to morph shoes, and maybe a sweater? Come on, Cassie. You're the morphing genius. I'm sick of these morphing outfits."

"But you look so cute in Spandex," Rachel teased him. “Besides, morphing clothes requires self-delusion, so that's really your area.”

"First, you're the gung-ho warrior princess who thinks she's immortal, not me,” Marco replied. “Second, nobody looks cute in these outfits. They aren't exactly fashionable. All I'm saying is - uniforms. Something cool-looking. And warm. Warm would be nice. When winter comes, we are going to be some sad little Animorphs."

“Won't uniforms make it obvious we're a team?” I asked. “And where are we supposed to get them? Wal-Mart? 'Hi, yeah, do you have alien invasion-fighting outfits'?”

Everyone laughed, although it wasn't all that funny. "I have a more important question," Rachel said. "How do we know when we're there? You know, our destination."

Jake made a ‘who knows?’ face. "I figure this ship is going like, what, twenty miles per hour? Figure an hour, and that puts us twenty miles out, right?"

Rachel pointed a finger at her forehead and said, "Jake's a total mathematical genius. One hour at twenty miles per hour. Right away he figures out that's twenty miles."

Jake laughed. "That's about all the math I can do."

[Actually, we're moving about eighteen miles per hour,] Tobias said.

We all just stared at him.

[I fly along the roads sometimes and watch the car speedometers. So I have a pretty good idea how fast I'm flying. When we were flying alongside the ship, I clocked it.]

"Okay, eighteen miles an hour, more or less, straight south," Marco considered. "That would put us within a couple of miles of where Cassie thinks we should go."

I winced. The whole plan relied on my information, on what I could understand or remember in what the whale had said. And I didn't entirely trust that information.

But it was the best we had.

[I'd better head back,] Tobias said regretfully. [I don't want to try and fly eighteen miles back without a rest. And if I stay on this ship I'll end up in Singapore.]

"Singapore?" Rachel asked.

[Yeah. I read the captain's log as we were flying alongside. That's where they're heading.]

Tobias flew off, leaving us the little watch.

It was extremely dull waiting for an hour, with nothing to do but try and guess what was in the big containers all around us. On the other hand, we knew what we had to do next would definitely not be boring.

So basically, we were happy to just be bored for a while, huddling together to stay warm in the whipping ocean breeze.

“We need to do something about these morphing outfits,” I muttered, my teeth chattering.

“Yes!” Marco said. “Exactly! Coordination!”

“I meant for warmth. This is going to get ridiculous. We're fighting aliens, we can't freeze to death.”

“Wetsuits?” Jake asked. “They're meant to be warm, right?”

“I think they're only warm, you know, in the water,” Marco said. “We don't normally do missions quite this crazy.”

“Wool?” Rachel asked. “It's an animal fibre. Maybe that'd be... easier to morph somehow.” She looked at me, as if I would somehow know. I just shrugged.

“The way we've been morphing clothes so far is through sheer self-delusion,” I pointed out. “I don't think the material matters, just the belief that it's a part of you.” But... it might be easier to convince ourselves that wool was a part of us. It was mammal hair, after all. We all morphed hair. I made a mental note to experiment.

We discussed clothes and morphing for a little while longer, and then the boys got into a debate over whether Woner Woman could beat Spider-man. Anyting, basically, to avoid thinking about our mission. A deep-dive race against the yeerks, based on sketchy dream-information that may or may not be from a whale.

“It's been about an hour,” Jake said eventually, checking the watch. “What do you think, Cassie?”

I bit my lip. “I can't tell anything from the surface,” I said, “or as a human. A lot of the information was in currents and temperatures and echolocation images. I think I need to be a dolphin to really understand them.”

Jake thought for a moment. "Oh, well, now is as good as any time, I guess. Let's head for the side."

We stood up, uncramping our cold, stiff legs and arms. We moved along the row of containers toward the left side of the ship. The port side, as they say. There was a solid steel railing that ran all around the ship, about waist high. Jake checked to see if we would be in view of the bridge, and we headed forward a little more to a blind spot where no one should see us.

The four of us leaned over the rail and looked down at the water. Marco whistled. "Man. That is some high dive."

"No big deal for a seagull or a dolphin, but a mighty long way for a human," I agreed.

"We can't morph up here. We'd never get our dolphin bodies over the side," Rachel pointed out.

"Nope," Jake agreed. "We have to jump in with our human bodies. Marco should wait for the rest of us to morph, then we can keep him aloft."

“Hooray for friendly helpful dolphins,” Marco said sarcastically. “Can we do this? I want to get to the part where we figure out how to get back to shore at the end.”

"Let's go," Jake said.

"Yee-hah!" Rachel said with a wild grin. She jumped up on the railing, balanced for a moment like the gymnast she was, then launched herself off in a neat swan dive. Jake and I exchanged a glance.

"Rachel," he said, and rolled his eyes.

"She's your cousin," I pointed out.

"On the count of three. One, two..."

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" I climbed over the railing and launched myself as far from the steel wall of the ship as I could.

"Aaaaaaaaaahhhh!"

I fell for what seemed like a very long time.

PAH-LOOOOSH!

I hit the water feet first and sank beneath the surface in a pillar of bubbles. The cold shocked me. The water was like ice. And just a few feet away was the intimidating steel wall of the tanker, sliding past at what felt like incredible speed.

I kicked my feet and began to rise to the surface. I've been a swimmer since I was little, but this wasn't a pool or a pond. This was the ocean. Twenty miles from land.

I broke the surface and gasped a lungful of air and a mouthful of saltwater. What had looked like a little choppiness from up in the ship felt like towering waves down here. I couldn't see any of the others. All I could see was the side of the ship.

There is just about nothing as helpless as a human being in the ocean. Without my ability to morph I would not have lasted an hour.

I focused on the dolphin inside me. At first, I thought it would kill me. I soon had most of the weight of a dolphin, with nothing but my human feet paddling to keep my head above water. My arms had already become flippers. I was too panicked to exercise any control over the change.

A wave washed over me, leaving me sputtering from my mouth and my blowhole at the same time.

I realized I could no longer keep my head above water. I took a deep lungful and let myself sink.

As my eyes went from human to dolphin, my underwater vision improved. I could see other figures kicking and writhing in the water around me. Jake, half-changed. Rachel, almost complete. Then, with a kick of my newly completed tail, I knew I was safe. I had made the change. I was a dolphin in a dolphin's world. The human clumsiness, the human cold, the human fear of an alien environment, all evaporated.

I was warm and in control and right where I should be.

[Jake? Rachel? You okay?]

They both answered. We'd made it. We swam after the boat.

[Come on Marco,] Jake called. [It's totally fine.]

High above us, a small figure leaned nervously over a railing.

[Really, it's great. Come on.]

Marco climbed over the railing and launched himself from the boat, landing in a mess of limbs about twenty meters away. We covered the distance in no time at all and dove, pushing ourselves under his sinking body and lifting him to the surface.

“You lied!” Macro gasped, shivering and spluttering and gripping my dorsal fin far too tightly in his nervousness. “This is not fine at all.”

[Just morph, you big dope.]

He did. It was no trouble, between the three of us, to keep his growing bulk near the surface as he changed. That was child's play to a dolphin. Finally, we dropped the fully formed dolphin into the water.

[Well, that was fun,] Marco said sardonically. [Let's never, ever do it again.]

[Cassie?] Jake prodded me.

I tried to relax, to let my human mind recede just a little. I needed to listen to the dolphin instincts. I needed to understand the whale's instructions. Something no human could ever do.

[Not far,] I said. [We're just a few... um... Forget it, there's no word for it. Just believe me, we're close.]

[After you, Cassie,] Jake said.

We travelled near the surface for a while. This made it confusing for me, because whales go deeper, and the world the whale saw and knew was a deeper world than I, as a dolphin, experienced.

And yet, I knew I was going in the right direction. My echolocating clicks painted murky, half- understood pictures in my mind of underwater hills and valleys and rifts. I felt currents tugging at me. I sensed changes in water temperature.

In the end, I just knew.

[Okay, everyone, get a good lungful,] I said.

We surfaced, blew out the stale air, and filled our lungs with the good clean ocean air.

[Hey. What's that?] It was Rachel.

[What?] I asked her.

[Over there. It's a helicopter.]

We all watched as a helicopter flew low and very slowly over the water. It was just a few hundred yards away, and with our dolphin vision, we couldn't see it as well as we might have with our human eyes.

But as it flew closer, I could see that it was dragging a cable through the water.

[Some sort of sensor,] Jake speculated.

[They're looking for something in the water, ] Marco agreed.

[It's them,] I said.

No one argued. We all knew it was true. Controllers were flying that helicopter.

The yeerks were here.


	10. Chapter 10

[We need to take that thing down,] Rachel said.

[As dolphins?] Marco asked. [Look, Rachel, I'm the joker in this group, ok?]

[We took down a group of freaking _sharks_ as dolphins. We have to at least try.]

[Yeah, we took down sharks, and we nearly died, and those are alien invaders. So maybe we should try to do this without letting them know we're here.]

[The priority is the andalite,] Jake reminded everyone.

[Everyone take in as much air as you can,] I said again. [We're going deep.]

We dove and swam almost straight down. Down, down, leaving the bright barrier behind. Away from the sun. Away from the light. Away from the air that we needed just as much as humans did.

I echolocated a school of fish ahead, just below us. But we weren't there to eat lunch. We swam through the fish and still we headed down. Down until we could see the ocean floor beneath us.

We levelled off and skimmed across the ocean floor, like low-flying jets racing at treetop level. Over waving fields of seaweed. Through darting schools of fish. Over jutting extrusions, of rock, encrusted by barnacles and home to a thousand bizarre crabs and lobsters and urchins and worms and snails.

Ahead was a ridge, a sort of long, low hill. We sailed over it.

[I'm starting to feel like maybe taking a breath would be a good thing,] Rachel said. [How much farther - ]

We all saw it at the same time.

It was hard to miss, and not just because it glowed with artificial light. A huge dome, covered with glass or whatever andalites used for glass, like a giant snowglobe. It must have been half a mile across. And within the dome, protected from the crushing force of the water, was what looked very much like a park.

A park, in a plastic dome, at the bottom of the ocean.

There was grass. Not green – it looked mostly pale blue to my dolphin eyes -- but it still looked like grass. There were trees like huge stems of broccoli. And other trees like orange and red asparagus spears. At the center was a small lake, crystal-clear blue water. From the water grew fantastic, transparent green crystals in shapes like eccentric snowflakes.

[Whoa,] Marco said.

[Man,] Jake commented.

[Is this what you expected, Cassie?] Rachel asked me.

[I... I had dreams ... I saw flashes of something... but this! This is unbelievable.] Neither my dreams nor the whale's messages had focused much on the inside of the dome, merely that it was there, and there was an andalite in it. I suppose that to andalites, the dome was nothing remarkable, and not really worth describing. But it was like nothing we'd ever seen.

[I think that may be a hatch down there,] Marco said. [You see the part that sticks out?]

[Let's try it,] Jake said. [I can't hold my breath much longer.]

We arced down toward a part of the glass dome that seemed different from the rest. As we got closer, we could really begin to feel the size of the dome. It was like approaching one of those huge stadiums where they play football. But even bigger, if you can imagine that.

[It is a hatch,] Rachel reported. She was a little ahead of the rest of us. [ It's some kind of a glass door. On the other side there's a little room, then another door that leads into the dome. There's a little red panel beside the outer door.]

[Let's either try it or surface,] Marco said urgently.

[That red panel. That's got to be the door-knob,] Jake said. [Here goes. Let's hope this works.] He pressed his beak against the panel.

Instantly the outer door opened.

[We should try this one at a time, see if it's safe,] Marco said.

[Not enough time,] I said. My lungs were burning. I needed air.

The four of us swam in through the outer door. There was a second red panel. I punched it with my beak and the door closed, sealing us into a small, glass room. We could see out and up into the ocean all around. But the side leading into the dome was opaque.

[I knew we'd end up in an aquarium sooner or later,] Marco said.

The water began to drain from the room, slowly, a little at a time. This opened an area of air at the top of the enclosure. I raised my blow hole and sucked in blessed oxygen.

[Okay, let's morph,] Jake said.

I had already started. By the time the enclosure was half drained, I could stand on my own human feet.

"We made it," Marco said after his human mouth reformed. "I don't know where we made it to, but we made it."

The enclosure was empty now. The four of us stood there barefoot, dressed only in our soggy morphing outfits. There was one last red panel beside the door leading into the dome.

"Ready?" Jake asked.

"As ready as I'll ever be," Marco said.

“Everyone try to look nonthreatening,” Jake said, and pressed it with his hand.

The door slid open. I felt a wave of warm, incredibly fragrant air rush in.

I caught a glimpse of...

Then a brilliant flash of light...

And suddenly I was unconscious.


	11. Chapter 11

I opened my eyes. I was lying on my back, staring straight up. Above me I could see the ocean all around. High overhead, fish swam by, sparkling. Higher still I could see the bright barrier between sea and sky. But it was very far away.

I rolled my head to the side. Jake was beside me, still unconscious. There was blue grass under my head, much more vivid in color to my human eyes than dolphin eyes. I looked the other way.

"Yaaaahh!"

A statement appeared in my head, more concepts than actual words. [Do not move. I stunned you to see what you are. But if you move, I will destroy you.]

I didn't move.

The person I was looking at was unmistakably an andalite. I looked him up and down, careful not to move anything but my eyes. I’d not actually had a chance to really look at an andalite before. At the construction site with Prince Elfangor, we’d all been pressed for time and sort of overwhelmed with the whole ‘aliens exist’ thing, and when we faced Visser Three, we were more interested about finding ways not to die. But here was an andalite who was neither dying in our arms nor trying to kill us, at least not immediately. He _wa_ s pointing a gun at me.

He looked smaller, younger probably, than Elfangor or Visser Three, but I hadn't seen them enough to be sure. Broad cloven hooves seemed to grip at the ground, larger than a deer’s, probably because they had so much more weight to support, topped by long, muscular legs. His body was covered in blue fur, a little darker along his spine and lighter down his flank… but that could just be the light. The spine did kind of confuse me; it supported six limbs and two ribcages, one in his deerlike half and one in his humanlike half. I’d held that position in mid-horse morph before and it was not an arrangement that worked for any length of time, at least not using human and horse parts; but just because he looked like a mismatched assembly of Earth animals to my narrow experience didn’t mean he operated like one. His upper body was weak-looking, with a thin neck and arms, although his fingers were longer and finer than mine. He also had six of them on each hand – and no fingernails, at least not that I could see from my position frozen on the grass. Maybe I just needed a better look. Hooves, but no fingernails? That made no sense. ( _You’re thinking in terms of Earth animals again. Stop expecting him to make sense as an Earth animal_.) Most of his face was taken up by broad nostrils, presumably leading to lungs in his upper ribcage and begging the question what the lower ribcage was even for. He had no mouth, of course. I briefly wondered how he ate.

If he were human, I'd call his demeanor nervous; his two central eyes were focused on me and the two stalk eyes glancing between a few points behind me. My unconscious friends, I assumed. His tail was poised to strike at a moment's notice. And the gun in his hands, looking like a smaller, lighter Dracon beam, was aimed right at me.

“We're here to rescue you,” I said slowly, praying he could understand English. Elfangor had understood English.

"What the... Oh," Marco said. "Please tell me that's a real andalite and not Visser Three."

Suddenly, without warning, the andalite's tail arched forward. The blade stopped inches from Marco's face.

[Visser Three! Do not speak that name!] the andalite thought-spoke.

"O-o-o-o-kay," Marco said slowly. "Whatever you want."

"We are friends," I said.

[I do not know you,] the andalite said. But he withdrew his tail and Marco started breathing again.

"You called me," I said. "We've come to help you."

[Called? You heard my call?] He fixed all four of his eyes on me, very briefly. [What are you?]

“A human. We're the dominant species on this planet.” We needed Tobias for this. Tobias had been so good at talking to Elfangor. Of course, Elfangor hadn’t been pointing a gun at us.

[My call was to my cousins. How did you hear it?]

"I don't know," I admitted. "I heard it in my dreams. So did a friend of mine.”

[Friend? One of these others?] A stalk eye flicked back to Marco.

“Uh, no. He… couldn’t come. But we guessed it was an andalite. We wanted to help."

[What do you know of andalites? My people are not known to humans. You know only your own planet. My uncles were thorough in their research. Unless you claim they were wrong?]

"We knew one andalite. We were with him when... when he was killed."

The andalite narrowed his main eyes. [Who was this andalite you say was killed?]

I searched my memory for his full name. "I can't remember all of his name. But part of it was Prince Elfangor."

The andalite jerked as if he'd been hit. His entire body seemed to quiver. His deadly tail arched high in the air.

[Prince Elfangor? No one could kill Elfangor. He is the greatest warrior ever. No one could kill him!]

"Someone did," Jake said, sounding pretty alert for somebody who was still waking up mid-conversation. "We were there."

[Who? Who do you claim killed Elfangor?]

"The one whose name you don't want us to speak," I said softly.

The andalite held his head high, but his tail sagged and dragged down to the grass. He lowered his weapon. [He was my brother. Did... did he die well? In battle?]

Jake answered. "He died protecting us, and defying the yeerks to the end. At the very last moment he struck with every weapon he had."

The andalite closed his main eyes for a brief moment. [My brother was a great warrior. His cousins loved him. His enemies feared him. No more can be said of any andalite warrior.]

I was surprised by what Jake said next. "I've lost a brother, too. He's one of them. A Controller."

The andalite opened his eyes. [And you, human. Do you serve the yeerks or fight them?]

"I fight them. We fight them."

[With what weapons? Do you have powerful weapons?]

"Only the weapon your brother gave us," I said. "The power to morph."

The gun went up again. [Now I know that you are lying. Elfangor would do no such thing.]

“You saw the evidence when we came in,” I said simply.

[Not from Elfangor. This is a yeerk trick.]

“We're here to help,” I insisted.

[I cannot believe that.]

“If more than one Controller had the power to morph we'd all be done for,” Marco interjected quickly. “And if we were Controllers, why would the yeerks send such valuable hosts on such a dangerous mission?”

[You are clearly here to kill me. I expected Visser Three to intercept my distress signal. But I did not expect him to be able to decode it before my cousins did. Nevertheless...]

“If we wanted to kill you we would've used big yeerk weapons to destroy the ship!” Marco countered.

[Then you are here to capture me.]

“Why would the yeerks risk four morphing hosts to gain one?” Jake frowned.

The andalite glared at him. But he looked uncertain.

“Guys,” Marco said, “We're going to have the yeerks here any second. Can we hurry this along?”

The andalite had lowered his gun. He looked between us, then up through the dome. He seemed to make a decision. [What is your plan?]

"To get you out of here and hide you," I said.

[You came only to rescue me?]

"Yes."

He looked at me for a long time, seemingly mulling my words over. Nobody moved. Then, suddenly, he smiled with his eyes, just as Prince Elfangor had done. [You will be tired after this last morph. You will need to rest.]

"Just a few minutes,” Jake said. “We don't know how long it will take the yeerks to get here.”

"How did you end up in the ocean?” I asked.

[During the great battle in orbit over your planet, the dome was separated from the rest of the ship.]

"Why?"

The andalite dug at the grass with his forehoof. [ I...I was too young for battle, by the laws of our people. Besides, the rest of the ship maneuvers better without the dome.]

"You're a kid? A child?" Marco asked.

[Yes.]

"Are you the only one left? The only andalite here?"

[Yes. I am alone. When the Blade ship appeared unexpectedly, they caught us off guard. I saw the main section burn. Dracon beams damaged the orbital stabilization of this dome. It fell. It splashed into the ocean and sank to the bottom. I have been here for these many weeks, hoping that my cousins would come for me. Hoping that some survived. Finally I risked sending out a mirrorwave call.]

"Just you survived," I said sadly.

[Just me,] he said. [No prince. No warriors.]

I felt a sinking in the pit of my stomach. I think the others felt the same way. I guess we'd all kind of been hoping this andalite would be like the prince. A leader. Someone who could take over the battle. Someone who would know more than we did.

"We're young, too," I said. "Too young to fight, according to the laws of our people."

[But still you fight!]

"We feel like we don't have a choice. Look, we don't even know your name. This is Jake, Rachel, Marco. I'm Cassie. There's one more. His name is Tobias."

[I am Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthil.]

We all just kind of stared.

"Ax," Marco said. "Pleased to meet you."

[Who is your prince?]

One by one we looked at Jake.

"Oh, give me a break," Jake said. "I am not anyone's prince."

But the andalite had stepped forward. He bowed his head and lowered his tail. [I will fight for you, Prince Jake, against the yeerks, until I can return to my cousins.]


	12. Chapter 12

We couldn't linger for too long. But nobody wanted to leave the dome.

"This is like actually being on another planet," Jake marveled. "This is all like part of the andalite world."

[Yes. We take our home with us into space. It angers the yeerks,] he added grimly.

"Why do they care what you take into space?" Marco asked.

[It is a part of everything they hate and would destroy if they could. The yeerks would take our world and make it as barren as their own. As they will to your planet unless they are stopped.]

I grabbed Ax's arm without thinking. "What... what are you saying? What do you mean about making the planet barren?"

He turned his big eyes on me. [The usual yeerk pattern. Once a planet is under their control, they alter it to suit their own desires. They will leave enough plant and animal species to keep the host bodies fed - humans in the case of Earth - and the rest they eliminate.]

He said it like it was obvious. Like it was just something I should know.

He started to move on, but I held his arm tightly. "Wait, wait. I don't think I understand you. What do you mean, they eliminate species?"

[They eliminate them. They will make Earth as much like the yeerk home world as possible. They will destroy most of the plants and all of the animal species except those they eat.]

I let go of his arm. I rocked back and grabbed at the air for balance. I felt like I'd been hit by a car. "No," I whispered. "That can't be. You're just saying that because you don't like yeerks."

The others were staring. No one was moving.

Ax looked around at us. His eyes narrowed. [Don't you know? Don't you know whom you're fighting?]

"We know they take over people's minds," Rachel said weakly.

[Yes. And that is one of their great crimes. But the yeerks are more than that. Yeerks are killers of worlds. Murderers of all life. Hated and feared throughout the galaxy. They are a plague that spreads from world to world, leaving nothing but desolation and slavery and misery in their wake.]

I felt cold. Small and weak and cold and afraid. I looked around, but even the inviting, lush andalite landscape did nothing to warm me. Up in the "sky" and all around us, I felt the immense pressure of the ocean, waiting to rush in.

[There are only three races left in all the known galaxy that still fight the yeerks,] Ax said proudly. [And only the andalites can stop them.]

"How long until your people return to Earth?" I asked.

He hesitated. [One of your years. Maybe two.]

"Two years!" Jake looked stricken. "Five kids against an enemy that has destroyed half the galaxy? Five of us?"

Ax gave that smile, the one he did with his eyes. [Six, my Prince,] he said.

"Six. Well then," Marco said with grim sarcasm, "with six it shouldn't be any problem."

"How did these yeerks get this far?" Rachel demanded. "How did this happen? If you andalites are so tough, why didn't you stop them a long time ago? How did a bunch of slugs who live in dirty ponds manage to become so powerful?"

Ax looked at her. [I am forbidden to tell certain things.]

Rachel's eyes narrowed dangerously. "You're telling us all of planet Earth may be scheduled for destruction and we are the only thing standing in the way, and you are going to keep secrets? I don't think so."

The andalite looked angry, but no angrier than Rachel.

"Um, guys, we should get moving,” I pointed out. Picking fights with our new alien friend probably wasn't the best way forward.

"Hey, I have a stupid question," Marco said as we headed for the hatch.

"What?" Jake asked.

Marco jerked his thumb toward Ax. "How do we get him out of here?"

Jake looked blank. "Um , Ax, I don't suppose you can swim? Swim really well, I mean. We're a long, long way from land."

[I would not swim in this body. I would morph a sea creature.]

"Like what?" Marco asked bluntly. "We have to travel far and fast."

[I have acquired a creature from this ocean. It was a large creature who swam close one day. I stunned him and acquired him. I thought he would be useful if I were to escape.]

"What kind of animal? What did he - " I stopped suddenly. I'd felt something. A shadow. I looked up. Through the air of the dome. Through the clear dome itself and up through the water.

It was on the surface. A cigar-shaped shadow riding the surface of the sea.

A ship. It had stopped moving. We ran for the hatch.

PING-NG-NG! PING-NG-NG!

The sound echoed through the dome.

"Sonar!" Marco hissed.

"How do you know?" Rachel asked.

"Didn't you ever see The Hunt for Red October? Great movie. Now let's leave. They've found us!"

PING-NG-NG! PING-NG-NG!

We crammed inside the small hatch enclosure, the four of us and Ax.

"Morph!" Jake yelled.

I had already started. I could feel the dolphin features emerging. My friends were beginning to mutate. Water rushed into the chamber, swirling up around our legs.

Ax was changing, too. It almost broke my concentration, watching him. In their normal forms andalites are strange enough. When they morph it is totally bizarre. Instead of two legs shrivelling and disappearing, it was four. And then there were the stalk eyes. And the tail, which lost its scythe blade but split into a new kind of tail, with a long, raked, vertical blade and a shorter lower blade.

The water swept up to my neck, but by that point I was more dolphin than human.

BA-BOOOOM!

The explosion shuddered through the dome. It rattled my teeth. I felt like my eardrums would explode.

[Yeerks,] Ax said. He said the word in our heads the way his brother had. With hatred and rage so deep it was impossible to comprehend it.

BA-BOOOOM!

A second explosion! Suddenly the exterior door opened and we swam out in a rush. Four dolphins and one...

Shark!

[ Oh , good choice, Ax,] Marco said. [You morphed a shark? ]

[Is it wrong?] the andalite wondered.

[Your species and ours are mortal enemies,] I explained.

[Oh. I have a lot to learn about Earth.]

[Here's the first lesson - let's get OUT OF HERE!] Marco screamed.

I soared up through the water, angling toward the distant surface. But as I rose I looked behind me. There were two jagged holes in the dome. Water was gushing in like Niagara Falls. As I watched, a third dark cylinder was falling slowly from the surface. Even I had seen enough sub marine movies to know it was a depth charge.

[What hosts have these yeerks used?] Ax demanded urgently.

[Um... they use hork-bajir and humans,] I answered.

[Hork-bajir do not swim,] Ax said. [We may be safe. The yeerks know little of deep waters. They have no oceans on their world, only shallow pools.]

[Good,] Jake said. [All they've had here are hork-bajir. And taxxons, of course.]

[Taxxons?]

[Yes, is that a problem?]

We were near the surface now, just a dozen feet from the bright barrier of sea and sky. Just then a larger, darker shadow swept over us. A shadow shaped like a long battleaxe. Twin semicircular blades at the back, a long, diamond- headed point at the front. It took me a moment to recognise it.

The Blade ship of Visser Three.

Something was falling from it as it passed over us. There were a dozen splashes. I rolled over to get a better look.

Taxxons. In the water. Coming toward us.

[Those nasty worms can swim?!] Marco yelled.

But the answer was obvious. The taxxons were racing after us. And they were very fast in the water.

Very fast.

[Tell me,] Ax said. [I have the feeling that this body I am in might be able to fight. Is this true?]

I grinned inwardly. [Yes, Ax. Sharks can fight.]

[Then, Prince Jake, shall we deal with these taxxon scum?]

[Don't call me 'prince,'] Jake said. [And the answer is yes. Let's go kick some taxxon butt.]


	13. Chapter 13

I don't know very much about taxxons. I knew they were reasonably agile and their little claws could apparently pilot spaceships. I knew they were uncontrollably hungry all the time; I remembered Jake cutting one open to distract its brothers once. And now, it seemed like they were great swimmers.

There were a dozen taxxons in the water. Five of us. Swimming in a straight line, the taxxons were faster. But, as we soon discovered, we were more maneuverable.

[Pick a target,] Jake said tersely.

I focused on one of the big worms. But I had to force myself into the fight. This was not a shark, and the dolphin's instinctive dislike of sharks was not there to prod me. And my human self, well, I don't like fighting.

I'd run from yeerks before. I'd fought to distract. But I'd never intentionally tried to hurt them.

But this was survival. Outswimming the taxxons simply wasn't an option. More than the freedom of my species was at stake; the vast majority of my entire evolutionary tree, what I'd thought of until a month ago as all of life, was what we fought to preserve. I aimed.

Taxxons are delicate. Squishy. They'd probably hurt me less than a shark's gills, I figured. I powered toward one of the taxxons as he powered toward me. We were like two trains running on the same track. Head to head.

At the last possible second, with the gaping red mouth of the taxxon just a foot away, I zoomed sideways, arched my back, and rammed the taxxon's side. Flesh that was rubbery but much more fragile than shark flesh split open around me. Gooey yellow taxxon blood and stings of taxxon guts spewed into the water.

[Aaaaarrrggghhh!] I wanted to throw up. I beat the water with my tail and recoiled from the horrible scene I had created.

All around me the battle raged. On one side of me, a dolphin split open another taxxon with a ram as I had; on the other, Ax bit a chunk out of a taxxon's middle.

Scientists believe that sharks are one of the oldest species of animals still in existence. Nature built them as perfect predators. Perfect killing machines. Nature hasn't had to revise or update them much. They were built right the first time.

Dolphins are very different. Scientists say that millions of years ago, dolphins were land animals. Sea mammals are not very different from humans and other mammals. They evolved their way back into the ocean. Part of that evolution included learning to cope with predators - with killer whales and sharks.

I don't know what sea the taxxon race evolved in. I don't know what natural predators they faced there. But they were not ready for this ocean. They were not ready to go one-on-one with the masters of Earth's deep seas. They were no match for dolphin or shark. Our ramming wasn't killing them; their own wounds were doing them in. Healthy taxxons were crowding around the injured to devour them. I saw an injured taxxon start eating another, ignoring the way a healthy taxxon was eating him.

[Okay, this sort of cannibalism doesn't make any evolutionary sense at all,] I remarked to nobody in particular. [This species should not have survived this long.]

[Let's get out of here,] Jake ordered. [They've had enough.]

[Not so tough, are they?] Rachel asked, trying to sound tough herself. But she seemed shaky to me.

I shot to the surface and filled my lungs with warm evening air. The sun was dropping toward the horizon. Two ships were close by and steaming in our direction.

But far worse was the Blade ship, which hovered now just a hundred yards up in the air.

[We can't waste any more time,] Marco said. [Even at top speed this trip is gonna take longer than we have in morph. We need distance between us and them or we're dead. We have to make a run for it, or we'll have to choose between being trapped in morph or demorphing around yeerks. And that's not a great choice.]

[You're right, Marco,] Jake said. [Top speed for the shore.]

[How do you tell the time?] Ax asked.

[Sometimes we can carry a watch. Sometimes, like now, we just have to guess and hope for the best.]

[Oh. With your permission, I will keep track of the time.]

[You have a clock?]

[No, but I have the ability to keep track of time,] Ax said.

[Good enough,] Marco said. [How much time left?]

[We have been in morph for approximately thirty percent of the safe time.]

[Thirty percent?] I tried to think. Math was never my best subject. And it's hard to be mathematical when you've just come from a battle and are scared half to death. [That would be about thirty-six minutes. Which means we have an hour and twenty-four minutes left.]

BAH-LUMPH!

I heard a huge concussion behind me. Like someone had dropped a big truck in the water.

[What was that?] Marco wondered.

[Something hit the water,] I said. [Something big.]

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

[Okay, now what is that? ] Rachel asked.

I rose to the surface to breathe and look around. The two surface ships were still closing in, but they were not very fast, and they were not gaining on us. The Blade ship had disappeared. I scanned the sky in all directions, but I couldn't see it.

[Does anyone see the Blade ship?] I asked.

[No. But that doesn't mean it isn't still nearby,] Jake said. [It may have recloaked.]

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

[What is that?]

[Whatever it is, it's getting closer,] I said. I fired off a rapid series of echolocating clicks. The picture that came back was startling.

[It's something in the water. Big. Huge. The size of a whale, but not moving like a whale.]

Jake, Marco, and Rachel all echolocated.

[It's after us, whatever it is,] Rachel said.

[It's big, it's fast, and it's after us,] Marco agreed.

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

I rose to breathe again and looked back. At just that moment I saw, far behind me, a huge, dark red, almost purple hump above the water. It seemed to be covered with hundreds of small fish tails, all beating frantically.

I went under. [Ax, there's something back there. I don't think it's from Earth.] I described it to him, at least what I had seen of it.

[Mardrut,] Ax said.

[Mardrut? What does that mean?]

[A mardrut is a beast that lives in the oceans of one of our own andalite moons. To think of that filthy yeerk scum on our own moon! Acquiring our animals!]

[Ax, look, what is a mardrut?] I asked him.

[It is a very large creature that swims by shooting water out of three large chambers. It makes a sound - ]

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

[A sound like that?] Marco asked.

[Yes,] Ax said. [I guess so. I did not recognize it. I have only heard it once, and that was in school, and I wasn't paying attention.]

It almost made me laugh, the image of an andalite classroom where andalite students zoned out on the lesson just like we did. But it really wasn't a good time for laughing.

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

[But this is no true mardrut,] Ax said.

[No,] Jake agreed.

[Then you know who and what is chasing us?] Ax seemed surprised. [You understand that this is Visser Three in morph?]

[We've met before,] Rachel said tersely.

[You have fought Visser Three? And you still live?] That definitely surprised the andalite. [I honor you.]

[Yeah, swell, thanks,] Marco said dryly. [But I'd trade the honor for a good outboard engine so I could outrun that evil creep.]

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

[Ax,] Rachel said, [How long can a madrut continue at this speed without tiring?]

[Far longer than the safe morphing time.]

[Well, we can't continue at this speed for that long. We're going to have to fight.]

[Great plan,] Marco said. [How?]

[I don't know, but the longer we delay the more tired we're getting.]

Already Visser Three was gaining. My own panic mingled with the creeping dread and fear that seemed to overcome us whenever he was near, that sense of perfect malevolence. Like the whole situation, no matter what the situation was, was a picnic to him. Like everything that still existed was just something he hadn't got round to destroying yet, and now that his attention was on us, we were dead.

[I am coming for you, brave andalite warriors,] Visser Three sneered. [I am coming for you.]

That voice churned my insides. I felt my own hatred flaring up to match his. The images Ax had painted - an Earth brown and empty and filled with nothing but the slaves of the yeerks...

[I am coming for you. You will be mine. Shall I make you Controllers? Or shall I simply eat you? The time for me to decide draws near.]

WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

We had all been exposed to Visser Three. Ax had not. He seemed to shudder, even in his shark body. The dead shark eyes showed no emotion, but his swimming became erratic.

[Ax,] I said to him. He did not answer. [Ax, we have heard his voice before. We've heard his threats. And we are still alive.]

[He will kill us,] Ax said. [He will kill us! He killed Elfangor!]

[Fear will help you survive. Panic won't. Not right now. Now I need to know about the mardrut, Ax.]

[It's carnivorous.]

[The Visser seems to like carnivores. Now, the water it lives in. Is it salty like this? This temperature?]

[I don't know,] Ax replied, panic on the edge of his voice. [It just lives in water!]

[Does it breathe water?]

[Yes.]

[Is it poisonous?]

[I don't... I don't think so.] Of course, if it was poisonous to anything on Earth, Ax wouldn't know.

[What are all the little tails for? They don't look to be very effective for swimming.]

[I don't know!]

[Okay. Okay, Ax.]

[If it breathes water, we go for the gills,] Rachel said. [Why change what works?]

[It breathes through the inlet tubes it uses to fills its swim chambers. The tubes are... about the width of one of your human legs. You won't be able to get any vulnerable flesh.]

Already, our muscles were burning with the effort of swimming at top speed. Visser Three had matched our speed when we started swimming, but we were tiring. He wasn't. He was going to catch us.

But if there was vulnerable flesh inside the Visser's breathing tubes...

[Ax, can a mardrut see?]

[No, it senses its prey via bioelectricity using a sense organ on...] He paused. [I believe I can buy you a short lead.]

[If you can buy me morph time,] I said, [I can buy everyone a longer one.]

[Hey, hey,] Jake said, [Nobody is sacrificing themselves today. If we attack, we attack together.]

[Yep, we should all sacrifice ourselves at once,] Marco quipped. [Shows solidarity. Do we have a plan here?]

[Sure. Ax can bite the mardrut's delicates to his heart's content; Cassie, what were you going to do?]

[Well, theoretically an eel could get in and mess up the Visser's breathing.]

[Aren't our eel morphs freshwater?]

[American eels return to the ocean to breed. I... I think we should be fine.] Maybe. When I was researching the eel, “Can it breathe in the ocean?” had not been an important question.

[Do it,] Jake said, [but dive deep enough that any lingering yeerk ships won't see you demorph.]

[You can hold onto me,] Rachel said, moving alongside me.

[I, uh... I might have a whale morph,] Marco said.

Everyone was dead silent for about five seconds.

[It was right there!] he said defensively. [What was I supposed to do, waste the opportunity?]

[And you waited until now to bring this up?!] Rachel fumed.

[I thought Cassie would be mad.]

[Alright,] Jake said, [Marco, with me. Marco, Cassie, start morphing. Ax, distract the Visser. Rachel, once these two are morphed...]

[We kick mardrut butt?]

[We kick mardrut butt.]

I was already half-human, and the lungful of air that had been fine for a dolphin was burning in my chest. Gripping at Rachel's dorsal fin with still-forming hands, I struggled not to breathe seawater as my tail split into legs and my skin softened.

 _Eel_ , I thought as soon as I was human. There was no chance that Visser Three would recognise us as human. There was no way he'd seen enough humans in mardrut morph to instantly pick us out of a mass of dolphins and sharks. But neither was there any reason to tempt fate.

I shrank. My limbs merged once more. My jaw moved, filled with tiny needle teeth; the cartilage in my throat moved sideways to support gills. Gills! I pumped water over them. The salt didn't seem to be doing me any harm.

[Ax, where are these inlet tubes?]

[On the front of the mardrut, around its mouth.] He sounded distracted. [One in the centre of its face, one on either side, about where your or my main eyes are.]

I turned to face the mardrut. I could feel it thrashing in the water behind us somewhere. I couldn't see it. I'd forgotten how bad eel eyesight was. An eel made a human look like an osprey.

Rachel had a solution. She closed her mouth very gently around my body, and I fought the impulse to bite her. [Let's do this! Woo-hoo!]

[Rachel, what the hell?! You're going to get yourself killed!]

[Oh, like the eel who's about to swim into an alien's breathing tubes has any right to judge.] Beneath us, the mardrut thrashed.

[Prince Jake, I am injured,] Ax said as if he was reporting the weather. [I suspect that I will lose soon.]

[Bombs awaaaay!] Rachel screamed in our minds, releasing me. [Cassie is in position.]

[Ax, pull back,] Jake said, [The whole purpose of this mission was to get you out of here alive. Marco's half-morphed.]

I felt a sudden irresistible pull of water, a current that sucked me straight through a narrow hole. Backwards. Reflexively, I bit at the edge, sinking my teeth into strange-tasting alien flesh.

[AAAAARGH!] Visser Three screamed in our minds and I fought the urge to let go and plead for mercy. Instead I bit down harder. The current had stopped; I let go, swam further in and found another place to bite.

[Visser Three is about to purge his water chambers,] Ax said calmly. [I would suggest that Cassie hold onto something as tightly as possible and try not to get caught in any valves.]

[Valves? What valves?] I was already burying my jaws in soft, mushy tissue as deeply as I could. The water around me tasted strange, sweet. Alien blood?

Then I felt what Ax called 'purging water chambers'. The Visser was sneezing.

A sudden rush of water, more powerful than anything I'd ever felt, slammed into my body. If my head hadn't been physically burrowed in flesh at the time, I would've blacked out at the very least, and probably been killed. I actually felt the water crunch against my spine. It tore my grip from the Visser and sent me rushing down the intake tube. It stopped as quickly as it had begun; water suddenly halted, flew back on itself, battered me from all directions. I swam forward to investigate and hit a wall. A valve. Of course. Seeing no reason to waste a good opportunity, I bit it, tearing with my sharp little eel teeth until chunks of flesh started pulling away.

[AAAARGH!]

[Marco's morphed,] Jake reported. [Let's all kick butt together now.]

The valve opened. I buried my head once more in alien flesh.

A new rush of water, in the opposite direction, away from the water bladder. It ripped me away once more and launched me out into the ocean. Even with my poor eyesight, I could see the trail of blood leaking from the intake tube. A shark, one fin and part of its face missing, bit savagely at the flesh next to me, slicing off tiny fish tails. Somewhere to the right, two dolphins were ramming and biting at what I assumed to be a vulnerable spot. Beneath us, a huge, dark mass rose, even larger than the Visser.

Visser Three seemed to be having trouble swimming. The inlet tube that I'd attacked had been on the right side of his body and it didn't seem to be working properly; when he tried to move forward, he just pushed himself in an arc. The rest of us darted out of Marco's way. He couldn't.

I'd seen a lot of strange things since becoming an Animorph. A humpback whale reverse-bodyslamming an alien seacreature while two dolphins and a shark watched was definitely one of the strangest.

[Ow,] Marco said. [That hurt.]

[Can everybody still swim?] Jake asked.

[Yep.]

[Yes.]

[Oh, yeah.]

[Yes, Prince Jake.]

[Right. Tactical retreat. Let's go.]

[He means it's time to run scared before our luck runs out and Visser Three eats us,] Marco hissed in the mental equivalent of a stage whisper.

[Shut up, Marco.]

We got out of there. If Visser Three followed, he was too slow for us to notice. We moved as fast as we could until Ax warned us that we were getting close to the time limit. After a quick morph refresh, we headed for the river mouth and called for Tobias, who had been worriedly patrolling the area. Then we demorphed, and Ax planted his hooves on Earth soil for the first time.


	14. Chapter 14

"It feels good to be human again," Jake said.

Marco said, "Oh, Jake, you were never exactly human to begin with."

I guess it was funny, but we were all too tired to laugh.

We dug our clothes and shoes out of their hiding place. I pulled jeans and a sweatshirt on over my wet morphing suit. I shoved muddy feet into my boots.

[Strange,] Ax said, watching us very closely. [What is the meaning of the things you place on your bodies?]

"It's clothing," Rachel explained.

[Why do you wear it? Does it protect you from the environment?]

"Yes. That, plus the fact that people get very upset if you walk around naked," Marco answered.

There was a fluttering overhead. One of the shadowed branches dipped with a sudden weight.

"Is that you, Tobias?" I asked.

[Yes. You... you found an andalite!]

"Yes. Tobias, meet Ax. That's his nickname, anyway. Ax, meet Tobias. Tobias is one of us."

[Sort of, anyway,] Tobias said dryly. [I liked this morph so much I moved in permanently.]

The andalite was shocked. [You were trapped?]

[Yes.]

Ax turned his eyes on me, then looked from each one of us to the next. He seemed very solemn. [You have paid a price for the gift of my brother, Elfangor.]

[Prince Elfangor was your brother?] Tobias demanded. His hawk's eyes glittered. [I was with him at the end.]

"This is all fine," Jake interrupted, "but we have to get out of here. And we have to decide what to do with Ax. He can't exactly just go walking through town with us."

"I think he should come to my farm," I said. "It's not so different from the dome ship. Fields, meadows, woods, all the way into the national forest land. He'd have to be careful, but it's the only place we have to hide him."

[I'll look out for him,] Tobias volunteered. [The forest is huge and hiking trails are pretty easy to spot.]

"That still doesn't deal with how we're going to get him there," Marco pointed out. "It's a long walk. People are gonna notice a big blue deer with extra eyes and a scorpion tail."

[I must morph,] Ax said.

"Yeah, but into what?" Rachel wondered.

Then, to my surprise, Ax walked over to me. He placed one delicate, many-fingered hand on my face.

[With your permission,] he said.

I felt… like I was just waking up from a peaceful nap, and not completely in the real world yet. Like what was happening wasn’t real enough to focus on, like… like I was in a trance, perhaps. Or sedated. I realised, in a sort of detached way, that the sunlight was heating the left side of my face immediately, that Ax’s fur felt more like very short, straight human hair than deer fur, and that it was kind of weird that the moon was close enough to physically drag water upwards but we still couldn’t feel its pull on ourselves. Everything seemed a bit surreal. I realized what he was doing. He was "acquiring" me. He was absorbing my DNA.

"Um... excuse me, but you're going to morph Cassie?" Marco asked. "Can you do that?"

Ax went to Marco and touched his face. One by one, Ax acquired each of us.

And then he began to morph.

His front legs began to shrivel away. His back legs thickened and strengthened. Suddenly a mouth appeared in his andalite face.

The scorpion tail shrank and disappeared.

He reared up and stood erect.

"Um, you know, I think we better give Ax some privacy," I suggested.

"Is he going to be a boy or a girl?" Marco wondered.

"Either way, let's turn our heads," I said.

We did. Probably just in time.

"Hey, Ax? There’s a pile of clothes in the bag near your feet," Jake said. Our outer wear. "Find some that fit and put them on, okay?"

A few minutes later we turned around. We all stared.

Ax had Marco’s T-shirt pulled up like a baggy pair of shorts. Jake’s pants were on his head.

"O-o-o-o-kay," Jake said. "A few small adjustments needed. Ax, are you male or female?"

"I chose to be-be-be-be-be male." He stopped suddenly, eyes wide. He was surprised by his mouth.

"I chose male because I am male. Male. Is that a good choice? Ch-oy-ce? Chuh chuh choy-yuss?" He twisted his lips around and stuck out his tongue. "Strange," he said.

"Male is fine," Jake said. "Rachel? Cassie? Turn around. Marco and I will help Ax adjust his clothing."

When I looked again, Ax was dressed normally.

But he didn’t look normal. He was of medium height, a perfect balance between Rachel and Marco. He was of medium build, somewhere between Jake and Marco. His hair was brown, with just a little of Rachel's gold and a little of my curl. His skin was the color of light brown sugar, a blending of my brown and Marco's olive, and Jake and Rachel's pale white.

He was human and yet, somehow, strange.

He jerked his head this way and that. "How do you look? Lookuh. LooKUH. KUH. How do you look around? Ound. Ow, ow, ownd behind?"

I grinned. It was exactly like every time I first morphed a new animal. He was getting used to his new body. Or at least trying to. As I watched him play with his lips and try out new sounds, he suddenly tumbled forward.

Jake grabbed him and held him.

"You only have two legs now, Ax," he said.

"Yes. Two. Oo. Very shaky."

"Yeah, we're a shaky species," Marco said.

"Well, let's get out of here," Jake said.

"Ax?" I said gently. "Don't talk to any strangers on the way home, okay?"

“Yes-suh. I will not talk to strangers. Strain-ger-suh.”

“Well,” Marco said drily, “this can only go well.”


	15. Chapter 15

A few days after we rescued Ax, Tobias showed me where he'd settled in. It was quite a hike for a human, too far away for my parents to stumble across him accidentally, but no trouble for a bird or a wolf. He was in a broad meadow with a little stream and plenty of lush green grass, not too far from the small meadow that Tobias himself had adopted as a home.

When he saw me demorphing at the edge of the meadow, he galloped over. [Cassie.]

“Hi, Ax.” I stood up. “How have you been?” _Alien, might not understand English idioms._ “I mean, are you alright?”

He thought about that. [Yes. This environment is suitable.]

“Good. Actually, I have some questions for you. About morphing.”

[You should know that I am forbidden to share technology with you. I still cannot quite believe that my brother did.]

“I don't want technology, I want information on how to use the technology we have effectively. For example, is there a limit to how many animals we can morph?”

[I... don't know. Most warriors won't have more than three or four.] His expression brightened. [Oh! I knew a morphing dancer once who knew twelve forms!]

“Twelve, huh? You say that like it's a lot. Is that because there's some kind of limit, or just because most people don't bother getting more?”

[The second, I think. Twelve is a lot. How many do you have?]

I took a quick mental tally. “Six.”

[Six? You've had the ability for barely one of your months!]

“And it's the best weapon we have. Frankly I don't know why your warriors don't use it as much as we do.”

[It's probably not as useful if you're fighting in space,] Tobias remarked.

[It's also... well, I understand that humans don't really have natural weapons so you have no choice, but for us it isn't... done... to go out of our way to fight in another body. Andalite tail and weapon fighting is an honourable discipline. It is only really spies who need to morph. And _arisths_... trainees... for our morphing exams, of course.]

“So you have no idea if there's a limit.”

[I am sorry.]

At least twelve. Maybe. If things worked the same for humans as andalites, and if Ax's morphing dancer wasn't some kind of anomaly. Well, that was some leeway. “Thanks anyway, Ax. It's more information than I had this morning. I just hope this power is enough to fight.”

[You are welcome.] He smiled with his eyes. [And do not worry. We have fought together. I know that all of you can fight.]

I nodded. I didn't know much about andalites. I didn't know much about the galaxy. I didn't know much about the very war we were fighting. I could only hope that we could trust his judgement.

I could only hope that he was right, because for the next couple of years, we had no other choice.


End file.
